Two New York Readings! Plus a Bit More - Peter Fenton Playwright Newsletter, June 2026
- Peter Fenton
- Jun 6
- 6 min read
This blog post also lives on my Substack.
I think we hear stories all the time about artists who lost their marbles and think “surely that would never happen to me”, but in fact, as of June 2026, I’m realizing I have taken on exactly as much as my present level of sanity can handle. This might mean coming to terms with the fact that I might be a bit of a madman myself… who knows? 😝
Here’s what’s going on this month in Peterfentonland:
Not Just One, but Two New York Readings:
BLUE SKIES YONDER Going Up at The Flea
I briefly worked for a publishing startup and the experience was so awful I wrote this play. BLUE SKIES YONDER is a contemporary murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie. I’m so excited to share that it has been selected to be presented as a staged reading in the Rogue Theater Festival on July 11 at The Flea Theater in New York City.
Monah Yancy will be directing this reading, with stage directions narrated by Liam Sullivan. I’m honestly quite glad I got some recent experience onstage because I will be playing the lead role of HARRISON. So much of BLUE SKIES YONDER is rooted in my real emotional experience that, while I’m certain someone else would do it better in a full production, for this particular developmental reading, I want to be the one to speak his words.
Joining me in the cast will be 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).
Tickets will go live on Monday, June 8, but I’m sharing this ticketing link with you in advance so you can jump on booking your spot ASAP:
CORONATION is Coming!
The Other Reason I’ll Be in New York
CORONATION is a very special play to me. From its workshop origins at Newtown Arts Company to the two high schools that have picked it up since (shout-out Stansbury High School and Lake-Lehman High School), this play has legs… and I’m delighted that it is part of the lineup for this year’s Spotlight New Works Fest!
CORONATION will be presented as a staged reading, directed by yours truly, and starring Simon Huynh, Yuliana Sleme, Monah Yancy, Sophrena Swanson, Blue Colacchio, and Derek Crosby with stage manager Brooke Hall at the Chain Theatre July 1 & 2, July 1 at 4:30pm and July 2 at 7:30pm. All tickets are absolutely free and available here:
Thank you also to BroadwayWorld for picking up the press release about our reading of CORONATION! Simon Huynh and I both provided comment. You can read it here:
Home, I’m Darling:
A New Community Theater Adventure
One of the greatest gifts of my career right now is how much of it I’m able to do with my friends, so many of whom I’ve met by being part of community theater. I hope even as my work gets greater budgets and notoriety that on some level, the productions I lead still feel like the best parts of community theater. And so… I’m directing another community theater show!
This time, I am directing Laura Wade’s wickedly funny dramedy HOME I’M DARLING at Langhorne Players. It’s about a couple trying to keep their 1950s suburbia fantasy alive, perhaps at the cost of their marriage and sanity.
We’re just wrapping up our fourth week of rehearsal. I’m impressed with my team on and off stage: Kira Stein (JUDY), Parker Madison (JOHNNY), Sara Stepnowski (FRAN), Danny Gleason (MARCUS), Denise Dole Puchalski (SYLVIA), and Megan Gramlich (ALEX), with producer D. Ryan Lafferty and stage manager Terri Bentley.
HOME I’M DARLING runs July 10-26 in Bucks County, PA. Tickets are available here:
And Last But Certainly Not Least:
IN THEATER AND WAR
Amanda Murray Cutalo and I make an excellent writer/director team along with “sexy production assistant” Joseph Cutalo (I won’t tell you which of us coined that title for him 🤣), and we picked a fantastic cast for the reading of Amanda’s modern farce IN THEATER AND WAR. The reading is going up at Stuart Country Day School of the Sacred Heart in Princeton, New Jersey on June 12 at 7:30pm. That is 6 days from the time of posting this newsletter.
I am directing this reading, starring Amanda Murray Cutalo as ISABEL ROBINSON opposite Jane Landes as ISABEL JONES. Joining them in supporting roles are Charlie Nicolini, Grace Tate, Allie Winik, Timothy Costello, Joseph Cutalo, Emily Gibson, Courtney Capriotti, Blue Colacchio, Nick DeMatteo, Christina Breeman, and Morgaine Ford-Workman, with stage directions read by Katrina Fleetham. If you know anything about Newtown Arts Company, this is basically a multi-era all-star cast.
Tickets to this reading are free! You can register your spot now, we’re expecting a pretty great crowd for this one:
Just Kidding, I Wasn’t Done Yet.
We’re Still Writing
I’m not putting a grand statement out there about getting any drafts finished this month, since… well, as you can see, I’m a bit busy in June 2026. But I wanted to share with you today the opening monologue in progress from the new draft of SEE AMID (OR, THE YULETIDE SHAKEDOWN).
This play is a radical re-imagining of the holiday play I once titled SEE AMID THE WINTER SNOW. I’m treating this as a brand-new play because I no longer fully agree with the politics I held in 2018-19 when I initially wrote and produced it in the Philly Fringe Festival. Here it is:
THE NORTH POLE, mid-late 2020s with an aesthetic veneer of Christmastime nostalgia from a bygone era. The bones of this set are simple to allow for representation of various locations with minimal set pieces, but this is unmistakably Santa’s Winter Wonderland.
AT RISE: A tight spotlight shows on a puppet SNOWMAN, think Burl Ives meets Benoit Blanc and he’s emceeing a cabaret.
SNOWMAN
I’ve lived a good, long life for a snowman. Now most folk don’t ever realize it, but when you’re a snowman, you’re lucky if you even live a week. There’s a few considerations you gotta keep in mind. That weather changes, you’re gone. If the neighborhood kids decide to get real mean and knock you down--yeah, you’re gone. If, say, the magic ice queen learns how to control her powers learning the power of love or whatever--well “Let it Go”, ‘cause yer gone, baby! But I’m a lucky old bag of ice.
Now the secret to my very long life is that I live at the North Pole--no matter when in the year you visit, step out on those city sidewalks--busy sidewalks--in the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas. You can go to the meadow and build your own snowman, pretend he’s Parson Brown for all I care.
My point is: I’ve lived a long time and I ain’t goin nowhere until global warmin’ gets me. So I maybe got a week, so listen up. I wanna impart some wisdom to you youngins before I’m... neutralized.
You may’a heard this story before and I don’t wanna rehash anything over-familiar--we sure do like to do that ‘round Christmastime, don’t we?--but I think you could learn a thing or two from Daisy and Mitchell, and IdaLynn Marble and Mayor Maureen. Ebb Whitfield, too--and yes, even Santa Claus. Now, at the time there was a nasty fight for city hall, and yes, the elves went on strike, but that’s not everything I remember. ‘Cause buried in that avalanche of news and politics and what-have-you was a simple story of love. And Christmastime. And change.
Ladies and gentlemen--and all the other elves out there--
Welcome to See Amid--or as I like to call it, The Yuletide Shakedown.
A banner is revealed. It’s a church-inspired banner originally reading “See Amid the Winter Snow” with the Snowman’s hand-wrought “or, The Yuletide Shakedown” covering what originally read “the Winter Snow”
SNOWMAN
Y’all like my sign?
Yeah, I stole it from some Sunday School classroom and liked the title, so I called this show “See Amid the Winter Snow”.
Then ‘bout a year or two ago, I did some reflection and realized that title makes it sound like I got a stick up my you-know-what, so I made some adjustments, and...
For better or worse, here we are!
Our show begins right here at City Hall.
***
And that’s all she wrote for June 2026! Happy Pride. I really appreciate that there are a growing number of you all who take the time to hear what I have to say. There is no reason to write if there is no audience, so I appreciate you rolling on with me.
Much love,
Peter Fenton
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