By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director 

The theater both leads and reacts to the world’s events. When I select a season for Cape May Stage, I often find myself drawn to plays that feel as though they have been ripped from the headlines—works that reflect the questions, concerns, and possibilities of the moment we are living in.

This year, that connection feels especially meaningful as our nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a milestone that invites both celebration and reflection. At the same time, we are witnessing a renewed national conversation about what is constitutional in a divided nation. Long-held beliefs are being tested, and the meaning of our founding documents is being debated not just in courtrooms, but at kitchen tables.

It is in that spirit that we will open our 2026 season this spring with Heidi Schreck’s Pulitzer Prize finalist play, What the Constitution Means to Me. In this deeply personal and often hilariously funny play, Schreck revisits her teenage years, when she traveled the country earning college tuition by speaking about the Constitution in debate competitions. Using her younger self as a guide, she examines how four generations of women in her family were shaped, protected, and sometimes failed by this defining document.

As we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—the moment our nation first put into words its highest ideals—this play offers an opportunity to reflect on how those ideals were later framed in the Constitution, and how they continue to shape our lives today. It reminds us that these documents are not simply relics of the past, but living frameworks that continue to define who we are.

The theatre has long been a place where artists imagine the future. In 1920, Czech playwright Karel Čapek first introduced the word “robot” in his play R.U.R.—Rossum’s Universal Robots. From the beginning, there was both fascination and fear: Will robots take away our jobs? Will they become our caretakers—or even our soldiers? If they possess intelligence, are they the same as biological people? Could a robot have a soul? Today, with artificial intelligence rapidly becoming part of our culture, those once-theoretical questions feel immediate and real.

Academy Award–nominated playwright José Rivera explores these very ideas in Your Name Means Dream, which Cape May Stage will present this fall. In this poetic and imaginative play, Rivera envisions a world where robots are created to serve human needs—but where one begins to question its own existence. Like the best science fiction, it is ultimately not about machines, but about us.

And underneath all of it is perhaps the most fundamental question of all: how we deal with each other. Older adults often face loneliness after losing a partner. Doctors caution that this loneliness can shorten lives, and yet comedians remind us of the humor in human relationships. Our summer season showcases the award-winning romantic comedy Kalamazoo, which celebrates the courage it takes to open one’s heart again, and in November we will return our popular musical holiday show, Murder for Two: The Holiday Edition, a joyous and hilarious whodunit. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in No Exit, “Hell is other people.” But theatre reminds us that other people are also our greatest source of joy.

In between these mainstage productions, we are delighted to present a series of musical and uplifting one-night-only events. Audiences will experience the electrifying Solomon Jaye in Tap Into Soul, as well as a special comedy evening exploring the joys and challenges of relationships, featuring three outstanding comedians. Back by popular demand for the holidays is NIC+DESI, whose extraordinary blend of song, dance, and storytelling has become a Cape May tradition. Our reading series will also continue, offered free of charge, providing audiences the opportunity to experience new plays in their earliest stages and be part of the creative process.

We always aim to entertain our audiences. But this year, that entertainment is matched with important themes—questions about our country, our future, and ourselves—that will stay with you long after the curtain call.

I hope you will join us.

Tickets and information about our upcoming season are available at www.capemaystage.org.

Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.

By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director 

I feel most alive in a theatre – both as an audience and as a storyteller in the role of an actor or director.  The uber storyteller is the playwright whose words create magic and all of us at Cape May Stage are seeking to identify emerging artists with new voices.

Entering a theatre space my voice automatically is quieter and I’m aware of other human beings and can feel my breathing alter and the excitement of being with a group of strangers who join with me to create – “An Audience”.  Similarly, when I enter the rehearsal hall as a director there is a collaboration with other artists that is thrilling as we use our tools to tell a story.  Actors take the words of a playwright and use their own vocal and physical instruments to bring those words off the page and onto the stage.  When these elements come together at the highest level, we create art.

Living in a digital age, all of us spend enormous amounts of time looking at screens on our phones, iPad, laptops, watches, monitors of every sort and the experience is cool and detached.  Theatre is hot – the practitioners and the spectators have a pulse, and it is dangerous because anything can happen.

We breathe as one and laugh together and sit in rapt silence together. Theatre civilizes us by fostering empathy, community and cultural identity through shared experience.  It can provide a space for important and often difficult conversations in an engaging and impactful way. 

Our National Playwrights Symposium at Cape May Stage brings Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winners together with writers who are mid-career, and all the participants are adults.  What is missing is the experience of younger artists. That’s why we are seeking high school students so we can include those voices.  Tell us your stories.  Use your imagination to create characters or use real events from your life to base the events upon.

As an incentive, Cape May Stage has created a contest with a cash prize for the winner of the best play.  It would be a dream come true if we could begin a relationship with a writer to produce that work.  This Christmas we are mounting a new work created specifically for Cape May Stage.  Dan McCormick wrote a play for us called “Becoming Satchel Paige” and now he returns to bring us “Let’s Catch Santa”.

Perhaps a future production will be your script. 

To learn more about the Young Playwrights Award, click here. 

Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.

[Originally published in the Star & Wave newspaper on October 8, 2025.]

By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director 

With the rise of social media, many of us find ourselves reconnecting with people we haven’t seen in decades. A simple friend request from a “friend of a friend” can suddenly reopen the door to bonds we thought long forgotten.

These ghosts from our past often arrive carrying memories — the scent of mountain air, the echo of a once-beloved song, the laughter of classmates we’d nearly forgotten. Cape May, of course, is famous for its ghosts, but I find myself haunted just as often by faded conversations and half-remembered readings that resurface unexpectedly. Sometimes these ghosts bring joy; sometimes they stir unease. And it’s in that contrast — between joy and sorrow, reunion and regret — that the essence of theatre is born.

In Dutch Masters at Cape May Stage, an apparently chance subway encounter turns out to be anything but. The two characters share a history, yet their memories of it are radically different. A third figure — ghostlike in presence — becomes the catalyst for a revelation that changes everything.

Theatre has long turned to ghosts to tell its stories. Shakespeare’s Hamlet opens with the ghost of the murdered king, setting into motion the play’s central conflict. In Macbeth, apparitions and witches steer the course of tragedy. Ghosts have always carried truth, warnings, or unfinished business.

As Halloween approaches — rooted in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when spirits were believed to cross into the world of the living — it feels especially fitting that Cape May Stage presents a play haunted by memory, identity, and the past. After all, our town has its own ghost stories: from historic inns to the stool at The Ugly Mug, where a mischievous spirit is said to occasionally the pinch servers.

Though Dutch Masters is a contemporary play, it draws from Shakespeare and even the Greeks, weaving a tale both “surprising and inevitable.” It asks what happens when ghosts — whether of memory, history, or conscience — refuse to stay buried.

So the next time a friend request pops up on your screen, consider: is it a joyful ghost… or one with an agenda? Either way, there’s no better way to explore the echoes of the past than an evening at the theatre.

Cape May Stage’s fall production, Dutch Masters, runs through October 19. Experience how the past can haunt the present by calling 609-770-8311 or visiting capemaystage.org for tickets.

Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.

[Originally published in the Star & Wave newspaper on September 10, 2025.]

By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director 

Perhaps the most powerful tool a producing artistic director has is the ability to hire a guest director to tell a particular story and to decide who that guest director might be.  We all know people who bring a certain sensibility to telling a story – one friend makes the same details funny, and another makes that story seem like a crisis.  Think of Alfred Hitchcock or Woody Allen or Ridley Scott telling the same story and imagine what that final product would be.

When I arrived in Cape May in 2009 from Los Angeles, I knew I wanted to mount Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold…and the boys” because it was a poetic exploration of apartheid in South Africa and resonated with me about colonization and power and race.  I had seen the work of Elizabeth Swain, a British woman working at the Antaeus Theatre in Glendale, California and asked her to come east to direct “Master Harold…”.  She cast Gregg Daniel who was superb in the role of a waiter.  The title is ironic.  The “master” is a young white boy who is the son of the owner of a tea shop and the “boys” are the adult black men who work at the tea shop. Gregg and I have become friends over the years and artistic colleagues.  He is the Artistic Director of Lower Depths Theater in LA and has come back over the years to Cape May Stage to direct “The Mountaintop” and “The Whipping Man”. 

Bringing that first Guest Director brought a whole new group of people to Cape May Stage.  The designer we found used the existing apse of the Cape Island Presbyterian Church as a scenic element with black and white tiles on the floor to make a statement.   Now Gregg Daniel returns to direct “Dutch Masters” in a production I cast from a workshop that was done in Los Angeles.

In 2010, I asked about favorite directors and actors from the past at Cape May Stage and was told about Chris Dolman as a director and Scott Greer as an actor.  Both have returned multiple times. Chris Dolman first directed “Lend Me a Tenor” as a Guest Artist with my wife, Marlena Lustik, and me in the cast along with Scott Greer.  It won the Best Production of the Decade 2010-2020 from broadwayworld.com and remains one of our most successful productions.  I turned the tables and directed Chris Dolman in “Boeing Boeing” that same season.  Chris Dolman became an Artistic Associate and directed me in “Red” about Mark Rothko and directed “Barefoot in the Park” and “Adopt a Sailor – the Holiday Edition”.  As a Guest Director, he has brought actors with whom he had professional relationships and as an Artistic Associate he has contacted and met with agents and actors and designers on my behalf before I meet with them.

I am always looking for accomplished directors to bring to Cape May Stage. Some artistic directors only hire beginning directors so nobody can threaten their position.  I am the opposite.  I only bring the best people I can find.  I hired Austin Pendleton, the Tony Award winning director who directed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on Broadway to come to Cape May Stage to direct a Canadian play called “Trying” by Joanna Glass.  A photograph of that production is in our lobby and our recent production of “Sexy Laundry” had our Canadian playwright and her agent note that their countrymen is represented in our roster.  Austin brought a Broadway set designer and a stellar cast to our Robert Shackleton Playhouse.  That is what Guest Directors can do.

I wanted a new way of storytelling and so I brought a Guest Director who is a specialist in Asian Theatre to our production of “The 39 Steps”.  Penny Bergman used Japanese kabuki methods to tell that story and returned this season to direct “Love Loss and What I Wore”, one of our most successful short run productions.  Similarly, Scott Hitz used Bunraku Japanese puppetry to direct “The Little Prince” in a production that moved from us to the Bristol Riverside Theatre and ultimately to the New Victory Theater on 42 Street right next to “Spiderman”!

Marlena Lustik is my favorite Guest Director with a theatrical flair.  Her “Billy Bishop Goes to War” using just boxes to create a World War One airplane was inspired.  She went on to direct solo shows with women – including “Red Hot Patriot” about Molly Ivins with Georgette Timoney who was just in “Sexy Laundry” alongside her Broadway veteran husband.  Marlena also directed Kate Hathaway in “Ann” about Ann Richards, the former Texas Governor and “At Wit’s End – the Erma Bombeck Story”.  Since Marlena has a long musical theatre background on Broadway, I’ve asked her to direct musical pieces like “Merry Melodies” and “A Cape May Christmas”. Her direction of “A Tuna Christmas” served as a model for me when I re-mounted a second version because the first was so successful.

During Covid in 2020, we shut down and did virtual productions.  The immediate years after that were challenging and so I directed all our productions to save money – I am already paid and don’t require additional salary.  But now, we can begin to bring new voices back into our offerings.

Guest directors not only bring individual voices to our repertory, but they also introduce new artists.  I am hopeful we can continue to bring the brightest stars into our community that is the magic of Cape May Stage.

Our fall show, “Dutch Masters,” runs through October 19 at Cape May Stage. Come see how the work of guest director Gregg T. Daniel by calling 609-770-8311 or visiting capemaystage.org for tickets.

Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.

[Originally published in the Star & Wave newspaper on July 30, 2025.]

By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director 

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Becall brought their real-life chemistry to the iconic movie “Key Largo.” Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hinted at their off-screen romance in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”, and Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman played a couple in a complicated relationship in “Eyes Wide Shut,” then parted company shortly afterwards.

In the theater, actual couples can light up the stage with their chemistry as well. Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker brought their modern-day romance to Broadway in Neil Simon’s classic comedy, “Plaza Suite.” Married for 50 years, Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn were the gold standard of theatrical partnerships as they starred side-by-side in hit plays such as “The Gin Game” and “Foxfire.”

Whether on stage or on screen, the authenticity of having an actual couple play a fictional one is undeniable. This summer, Georgette Reilly Timoney plays opposite her husband in real life, Bill Timoney, in the international hit comedy, “Sexy Laundry,” now at Cape May Stage.

A few seasons ago, the Tony-award-winning actress Karen Ziemba played opposite her husband of many years, Bill Tatum, in the world premiere of “America’s Sexiest Couple” on our stage. The witty banter created by the Emmy-Award-winning writer, Ken Levine, captured a sense of humor that can only be achieved by spending many years together.  We were pleased that the production premiered at our theater in 2022, and since then has played all over the world. 

Last season, newlyweds John Patrick Hayden and Alexis Bronkovic were hilarious in “Ms. Holmes & Ms. Watson – Apt. 2B” by Kate Hamill. This couple played a variety of roles in this ensemble show, but back in 2018 while they were performing together in the play “Chapter Two,” they actually purchased their wedding rings on the Washington Street Mall.

Through the years, I have thoroughly enjoyed playing opposite my wife, Marlena Lustik, in everything from comedies such as “Barefoot in the Park” and “Lend Me A Tenor” to dramas like “Adopt a Sailor” and “The Lion in Winter.” With an accomplished artist like Marlena, I am forced to really listen and pick up on her rhythms. Since we know each other so well, it reminds me of jazz as we explore the same dialogue over many weeks of performances.

Marlena and I share a vocabulary of movement and understand nuance at a higher level as a result of decades of life together. Even the many readings that we have done together are made funnier and more profound by having a scene partner who can communicate with a subtle lift of an eyebrow or a tiny pause before a word.

The theater is a place where people in the audience can recognize their own lives simply by watching characters on the stage. Audiences at “Sexy Laundry” tell me every night that they experience that connection with our current cast.

Our summer show, “Sexy Laundry,” runs through August 24 at Cape May Stage. Come see how a real-life couple creates a dynamic on-stage connection by calling 609-770-8311 or visiting capemaystage.org for tickets.

Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.

[Originally published in the Star & Wave newspaper on April 23, 2025.]

By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director 

Since our theater at Cape May Stage has no curtain, we purposely use scenery to help tell the stories in our plays.  While some sets may serve as visual jokes, they are more often metaphors for the central theme of our plays.

When we produced a farce called “Boeing, Boeing,” our central character, a male pilot, was manipulating the schedules of three stewardesses—and romantic interests—while he flew around in circles to avoid getting caught.  To accentuate the play’s frenetic pace, I asked our set designer, Robert Martin, to incorporate circles in his set design.  He, in turn, arranged the walls on the stage in a semi-circle, placed a circular coffee table on top of a circular rug, and used a round bean bag chair that was true to the period.

Similarly, our set for the Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, “Proof,” told the story of a math genius and her mentally-ill father, so the set was unbalanced with mathematical equations scribbled all over the siding of their house.  The play’s title refers to both a mathematical proof and the story of a young woman proving that she was the one who solved the problem.  The set alone introduced us to their world before a single word of dialogue was spoken.

For the comedy, “Art,” we wanted a set that created a world of pretension where the “art of the deal” was more important than the art itself, which we accomplished by having a white painting fly on and off the set like a circus performer.  We also explored three character’s friendship, which was at the heart of the story, by creating three different looks for their Paris apartments.

My favorite metaphor in set design over the years was for “A Walk in the Woods,” where the director, Marlena Lustik, collaborated with the set designer, Shawn Fisher, to use papers that had been run through a shredder to stand in for the trees alluded to in the title. These papers were filled with “top secret” information in an arms negotiation and at one point tiny shreds of paper also fell from the sky, representing the leaves on the paper trees as well as the possibility of renewed hope for peace.

Currently, I am working with set designer Josh Iacovelli, on a play called “Vanities” which toys with the double entendre of vanity as a piece of furniture and vanity as an act of behavior.  Our plan is to have one huge vanity across the entire stage with Japanese lanterns surrounding the mirror as light bulbs.  We will also have three normal-sized vanities where our characters will change before our eyes as we tell the story of three women navigating their friendships from high school to sorority times in college to adulthood. And through it all, their vanity mirrors provide reflections of who the women think they are or are expected to be, rather than who they truly are.

Our season opener, “Vanities,” runs from June 4 to June 28 at Cape May Stage. Come see how we set the stage for a fun and reflective night at the theater by calling 609-770-8311 or visiting capemaystage.org for tickets to the show.

Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.

[Originally published in the Star & Wave newspaper on February 12, 2025.]

By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director 

Certain slang expressions and practices used in the theater have become popular sayings among the general population.

“The show must go on” was first used in the theater world to mean that performers are expected to continue with a play no matter what happened. Off the stage, this phrase has come to mean that work must continue despite challenges and setbacks, just as a performance would in the theater.

In theater, “upstage” means the area toward or at the rear of the physical stage. Since the 1600s, raked or sloped stages have been used to improve the view and sound for spectators.  With the back of the stage being physically higher than the front, the back was described as being “upstage”. This also helped create an optical illusion of distances.  When an actor walked away from the audience, they literally walked up a slight incline. 

Some actors deliberately walk upstage, forcing their acting partner to turn their faces away from the audience, so the attention was on the “upstage” actor. This practice became known as “upstaging” – a deliberate or accidental way of overshadowing a fellow performer.

Over time, “upstage” entered common vernacular to describe situations outside the theater where someone is overshadowed or outshone by another person. For example, politicians or celebrities today are as likely as actors to complain about being “upstaged” or having someone divert attention away from them.

Many cultures have symbols, like the “evil eye,” believed to ward off bad energy and bring good luck. Similarly, actors across different cultures use phrases that express the opposite of their intended meaning to wish someone good fortune. One well-known example is the theatrical expression “break a leg,” which originated in the theater as a way to wish performers success. Today, this phrase is commonly used beyond the stage to wish good luck in various activities.

There are many interpretations about where this expression came from.  Some say it is shorthand for “break a legend” when actor managers like David Belasco or David Garrick ruled and the novice actor was hoping to make their reputation.  Others think it comes from breaking the curtain line in the wings that are called “legs.”

Speaking of wings, they are the areas to the left and right of the proscenium that are out of sight of the audience.  If an actor had to go on stage without having fully memorized their lines, they would stay close to the wings, where stagehands could quietly feed them their lines. This led to the idea of “winging it” — performing without adequate rehearsal or preparation, such as giving an impromptu speech or attempting a task without preparation.

We call the audience “the house” because the spectators together create a home for each performance.  A theater building is only complete with an audience so they are “the house”.

In early theater, stages were illuminated by burning quicklime, which produced a bright white light. To be “in the limelight” meant to be the center of attention on stage, a meaning that persists today.

Even the word “theater” itself comes from a Greek word “theatrum,” meaning “a place for viewing.” I have always thought that the theater is the place where one can truly see through storytelling.

Cape May Stage announces its 2025 schedule on March 3^rd. And we hope to see you in “the house” for our shows this season.

Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.

By Emma Bilderback, Dramaturg

In 1905, William Sidney Porter (nom de plume O. Henry) approached the corner of 18th and Irving Place, found a seat at the tavern there, and allegedly wrote The Gift of the Magi. It was a part of a collection called “The Four Million.” It was named so in critical response to Gilded Age socialite Ward McAllister, who claimed there were only 400 people in New York City worth knowing. O. Henry’s thesis with his title is that every person was worth knowing, with New York’s population at the time being about four million. 

The Gift of the Magi evokes the Nativity story, but it was more their spirit than their story that Henry was drawing on. The title receives its explanation in the final paragraph of the story: 

“The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.” 

There is wonder in all of our narratives, there is love and there is loss. Each of us has a story worth telling. It’s one of the wonders of being human, our capacity for love and our capacity for storytelling. The Gift of the Magi encapsulates both of these things.

Cape May Stage joins a cacophony of adaptations of the famed story, Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas, even Mystery Science Theater 3000. There is something truly timeless about two people expressing their love to each other imperfectly; knowing that despite hardships, the love lasts.