{"id":2394949,"date":"2026-04-29T18:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T18:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2394949"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T18:55:11","slug":"highlights-northern-stage-premieres-new-play-by-dartmouth-alum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/highlights-northern-stage-premieres-new-play-by-dartmouth-alum\/","title":{"rendered":"Highlights: Northern Stage premieres new play by Dartmouth alum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Annie Fang, left, and Serena Brook, right, rehearse for Northern Stage\u2019s production of \u201cWonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret.\u201d The play begins previews on May 13 in White River Junction.  (Courtesy Northern Stage)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Everlit Audio Player\" src=\"https:\/\/everlit.audio\/embeds\/artl_WKBBEiJm74K?ui_title_icon=headphones&amp;client=wp&amp;client_version=3.1.5\" width=\"100%\" height=\"136px\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>WHITE RIVER JUNCTION \u2013 Dartmouth College alum Talene Monahon is making her return to the Upper Valley for the premiere of her new play \u201cWonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret,\u201d which begins previews at Northern Stage on May 13. <\/p>\n<p>Developing new works has been a focus at Northern Stage for over a decade, Carol Dunne, the theater\u2019s producing artistic director, said. <\/p>\n<p>That effort has redoubled in the years after COVID. <\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cNew work in the American theater has been decimated since the pandemic,\u201d Dunne said. <\/p>\n<p>If regional theaters like Northern Stage don\u2019t take it upon themselves to develop fledgling works, they might never get made, Dunne said. <\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Northern Stage and Classic Stage Company, an Off-Broadway theater, co-commissioned Monahon to write \u201cWonder!,\u201d an adaptation of a 1714 farce by English playwright Susanna Centlivre. Set on a cruise ship, \u201cWonder!\u201d revolves around a family vacation gone awry when a famous painting is discovered missing and the suspect is thought to be on board.<\/p>\n<p>The theater has staged a number of other new works in the past couple years, including Eric Love\u2019s adaptation of J.M. Barrie\u2019s \u201cPeter Pan\u201d and Matthew Libby\u2019s \u201cSisters,\u201d a heartfelt story about the intertwining lives of two siblings, one of whom is an AI program.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSisters\u201d was directed by Aileen Wen McGroddy, who will return to Northern Stage to direct \u201cWonder!\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The play also marks Monahon\u2019s homecoming at Northern Stage. Thirteen years ago, in her final year at Dartmouth, she acted in a production of \u201cThe Importance of Being Earnest\u201d under Dunne\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>In the years since, Monahon, a Boston-area native now living in New York City, has gone on to write many plays including the satirical drama \u201cMeet the Cartozians,\u201d which recently earned two Outer Critics Circle Awards nominations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s been such a joy to come back\u201d to Northern Stage, Monahon said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWonder!,\u201d which runs roughly two-and-a-half hours, is an ensemble piece, and its cast of nine includes Canadian actress Martha Burns, a recent star in Northern Stage\u2019s \u201cThe Children,\u201d and Tony-Award winning actor Will Brill, who is also Monahon\u2019s partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Directing the group has been \u201calmost like conducting an orchestra,\u201d McGroddy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The play is a comedy in the purest sense, with jokes packed into every minute of dialogue.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTalene has written the script with a lot of keen ear to when the joke lands,\u201d McGroddy said. Part of the work of directing has been to continue honing that sense of comedic timing, to figure out which jokes sing, and which can be left out.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For McGroddy, some of the joy of directing new plays is entering their \u201cimaginative space\u201d and getting to shape that space through collaboration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s such a pleasure to have a playwright there to collaborate with,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>While big cities like New York bring a sense of momentum to the process of developing new plays, there\u2019s something grounding about producing work for Upper Valley audiences, McGroddy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Monahon, who works primarily in New York, has found that any version of a play that\u2019s staged in the city can feel like \u201cthe definitive production,\u201d she said, \u201cwhich can be really hard when you\u2019re working on something for the first time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>She hopes that \u201cWonder!\u201d will eventually be staged more widely, so it\u2019s been helpful to take the play out of New York for its premiere.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it has to do with the area\u2019s high concentration of artists and academics, but Upper Valley audiences are also generally receptive to new work, Dunne said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Two recent readings of \u201cThe Age of Mary,\u201d a new play by Avery Deutsch, winner of the 2025 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award, drew about 150 people between both events.<\/p>\n<p>McGroddy has been part of readings for three different plays at Northern Stage and \u201cAll three of those readings have had really engaged, curious audiences,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret\u201d is in production from May 13 through May 31 at Northern Stage in White River Junction. For tickets ($40-$80; $28 for students and people 25 and under; $10+ at the May 13 preview) go to <\/em><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/northernstage.org\/\"><em>northernstage.org<\/em><\/a><em> or call 802-308-4324.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source vnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Annie Fang, left, and Serena Brook, right, rehearse for Northern Stage\u2019s production of \u201cWonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret.\u201d The play begins previews on May 13 in White River Junction. (Courtesy Northern Stage) WHITE RIVER JUNCTION \u2013 Dartmouth College alum Talene Monahon is making her return to the Upper Valley for the premiere of her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2394950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[400855,22672,467339,24047,379891],"class_list":["post-2394949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-dartmouth-college","tag-latest-news","tag-northern-stage","tag-theater","tag-white-river-junction-vt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Highlights-Northern-Stage-premieres-new-play-by-Dartmouth-alum.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2394949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2394951,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2394949\/revisions\/2394951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2394950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2394949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2394949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2394949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}