Darling, I'm Home - Peter Fenton Playwright Newsletter July 2026

Peter Fenton
Jul 6
5 min read

This blog post also lives on my Substack.

In the summer of 2023, after the marathon that was seeing ABANDON ALL HOPE through its Off-Broadway run, I fell into what I can best approximate (of course, as a man who has never had kids) to postpartum depression. I can tell I’ve grown in these last three years because—at the end of my marathon coming on Sunday, July 12—I’m relieved to not have a new project to jump right into.

Here’s what July is looking like in Peterfentonland:

Theater stage set as a vintage kitchen-living room with checkered floor, couch, table, and chairs; empty audience seats at left.

I. HOME I’M DARLING OPENS FRIDAY THE 10TH

Four actors sit and talk on a living-room stage set with couch, coffee table, and painted walls, evoking a tense domestic scene.

Right now, I’m about to start tech week at Langhorne Players for a wickedly funny show I’m directing called HOME, I’M DARLING by Laura Wade. The work on stage is really exceptional among this team: Kira Stein leads the cast as self-appointed housewife JUDY to reluctant husband JOHNNY, played by Parker Madison, with Sara Stepnowski playing snarky best friend FRAN and Danny Gleason as her inappropriate husband MARCUS. Denise Dole Puchalski plays Judy’s staunch feminist mother SYLVIA and rounding out the cast is Johnny’s hypermodern boss ALEX, played by Megan Gramlich.

So often, when we talk about love and marriage, there’s this idea of the “honeymoon phase” and then real life, and we romanticize that honeymoon phase when reality proves itself to be difficult. I think what speaks to me most in HOME I’M DARLING is that love forged through facing reality and continuing to choose love is so much deeper and more authentic than any of the impressions of love we get in the honeymoon phase. Fantasy can get you so far, and it’s scary to leave fantasy behind, but life becomes so much richer when you take real stock of what actually works for you and what you actually want in the confines of reality.

Tickets are live on Langhorne Players’ website. We open on Friday, July 10 at 8:00pm. I hope you can join us:

HOME, I'M DARLING Tickets

II. BLUE SKIES YONDER WILL BE READ IN NEW YORK ON SATURDAY THE 11TH

(Yes, Literally the Next Day)

Theatrical reading on a studio stage; three actors at music stands, with Blue Skies Yonder by Peter Fenton poster at left.

One of the fun things about directing is in most theatrical productions, when you are the director, your job ends the moment the show opens, and it’s in the hands of the cast and stage manager to carry it out through the run. That is the case with HOME, I’M DARLING.

My murder mystery in late-stage capitalism BLUE SKIES YONDER will be read at The Flea Theater in New York City on Saturday, July 11 at 7:30pm as part of Rogue Theater Festival. I will be playing HARRISON FOWLER.

At his lavish book launch party, promising young author Harrison Fowler spirals under the weight of a mismanaged manuscript and the deadly ambitions of his colleagues and loved ones. In the cutthroat world of publishing, the real killer might be whoever tells the best story. This play is a dark comedy about queer survival, creative ownership, and the stories we tell to stay relevant—even if it kills us.

This reading is directed by my dear friend and frequent collaborator Monah Yancy, and the cast includes Samuel Cheng (JASON), Avery Kellington (MARYBETH), my real-life dad Jim Fenton (PRESTON), León Rose (COLE), Brittaney Delsarté Chatman (REBECCA), Minh-Chau Scott (JILLIAN), and Hayley Jo Pellis (AMBER), with Liam Sullivan reading stage directions.

Seating is limited—get your tickets to this New York reading ASAP:

BLUE SKIES YONDER Tickets

III. CORONATION WENT REALLY WELL

It’s Ready for the Next Yes

Six performers stand at music stands on a black-box stage under warm lights, talking and smiling during rehearsal.

We conducted all of our rehearsals for CORONATION over Zoom. The reason for rehearsing over Zoom is that I don’t live in New York (yet 👀), and this was “just a reading” as part of the Spotlight New Works Fest and as far as I’m concerned, the director’s responsibility for a staged reading is to get everyone on the same page to answer the questions: 1. Who is your character? and 2. What show are you in? Everything necessary can be cultivated over Zoom, even though nothing beats working together in person.

I’d worked with Yuliana Sleme (MARIA), Monah Yancy (MRS. LOWRY), Sophrena Swanson (JANELLE), and Blue Colacchio (CANDICE) each before, but I hadn’t met Simon Huynh (DAN), Derek Crosby (BRYAN), or Brooke Hall (our stage manager) in person prior to the day of our tech and reading.

Rehearsals went exceptionally well. Because this team had such a handle on these characters and the story so quickly, I was able to spend our rehearsals listening for pace and coherence and by the end, made a pretty radical change to the script—rather than having six actors play fourteen roles, I distilled the play into a true six-person ensemble piece. No other characters appear on stage than DAN, MARIA, MRS. LOWRY, JANELLE, CANDICE, and BRYAN. And the play is so much stronger for it. It’s a tight 85-90 minute show now and tells exactly the story it sets out to tell.

By the time we got together in person, it felt like we’d all been friends and collaborators for years. Our reading played to about 60 audience members in total over the two days, both New York locals and my parents and many of my local collaborators in Bucks/Mercer County alike. It makes me truly happy to see a cast enjoy putting a show together and an audience enjoy it right along with them—it reminds me why I do this.

The cast of CORONATION at Spotlight New Works Fest 2026 in New York City, Monah Yancy Blue Colacchio Derek Crosby Sophrena Swanson Simon Huynh Yuliana Sleme with stage manager Brooke Hall and writer director Peter Fenton

I’m feeling incredibly grateful to the cast, audience, and festival coordinators for making CORONATION shine the way it did in New York last week. And I’m more than ready for CORONATION’s next Yes.

See some photos and read a sample of the new draft on my website. If you ask nicely, I might send you the entire script:

More About CORONATION

IV. AND… WE’RE WRITING: BONNIE & CLYDE & PETER

Four actors perform onstage in period costumes; two couples dance and flirt, one woman holding cards, with props and crates.

I haven’t made any real progress in new first drafts since the top of June (as you can see, for pretty good reason). SEE AMID OR, THE YULETIDE SHAKEDOWN will be my next finished project, which I’m hoping to dive right back into after BLUE SKIES YONDER, but I wanted to take a second to tease my next project after that.

In the spring of 2025, I directed a production of Frank Wildhorn’s BONNIE & CLYDE that changed my life. My work with Minh-Chau Scott (BONNIE), Liam Sullivan (CLYDE), Joseph Cutalo (BUCK), and Amanda Murray Cutalo (BLANCHE) was some of my finest ensemble building to date.

How lucky I am as a writer and director that nobody owns the copyright to historical domain characters Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, or Buck and Blanche Barrow… 😉

I’m thinking this project will manifest as a dark comedy pressure cooker single-room, single scene full-length play. I’ve yet to write a true “bottle episode” play, and I want to give myself that challenge in the near future. I’m still drawing the outline.

***

And that’s all she wrote for July 2026! May your air conditioner work better than mine does. Thanks for coming along with me for the ride. I’m excited to see what’s in store—and I’m excited to take a long nap after July 12.

Much love,

Peter Fenton