{"id":2453247,"date":"2026-06-10T19:00:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2453247"},"modified":"2026-06-10T19:00:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:00:52","slug":"circle-mirror-transformation-opens-at-parish-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/circle-mirror-transformation-opens-at-parish-players\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Circle Mirror Transformation&#8221; opens at Parish Players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">THETFORD \u2014 The first time J. Bailey Burcham saw\u00a0Annie Baker\u2019s play \u201cCircle Mirror Transformation,\u201d he hated it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the time, he was an ambitious theater student in Kansas, and a show about an amateur drama class struck him as petty and insulting to the art form\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI was so angry about it,\u201d Burcham said in a recent interview.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But more than a decade later, Burcham is director of sales and marketing at Northern Stage, and his views on community theater have evolved greatly as he\u2019s become more involved with it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His opinion of Baker\u2019s play has evolved too, so much so that this week he\u2019ll make his Upper Valley directorial debut with a production of \u201cCircle Mirror Transformation\u201d at Parish Players, the community theater in Thetford.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">From left to right, Sean Dabney, Jon Protas, Gwendolyn Dae Roland and Chloe Jung rehearse \u201cCircle Mirror Transformation,\u201d which opens this week at the Eclipse Grange Theatre in Thetford. Courtesy image \u2013 J. Bailey Burcham. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Directing the show has been \u201ca way for me to revisit it as a theater professional who has sort of come to grips with the importance of small theater and regional theater,\u201d Burcham said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The characters in \u201cCircle Mirror\u201d are among theater\u2019s most humble students. Residents of the fictional town of Shirley, Vt., they\u2019ve signed up for an adult drama class by a spirited community center director who has never before taught such a class.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Burcham likened \u201cCircle Mirror\u201d to \u201ca very quiet meditation on the human condition of awkwardness,\u201d generated in large part by the uncomfortable pauses that balloon in between bits of dialogue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In spite of the uneasy silences, or perhaps because of them, the class participants start to attune to each other, witnessing and recounting one another\u2019s struggles and vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat the play really poses as a concept is what it means to be present,\u201d Burcham said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Practicing presence can be a big ask for actors and their audiences, especially when it\u2019s become commonplace to see someone on their phone in the middle of a movie or play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But for Baker, whose play \u201cThe Flick\u201d earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2014, loaded silences  are \u201cwhere the story lives,\u201d Burcham said. \u201cShe\u2019s trusting us to find the meaning in what isn\u2019t said.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A preoccupation with silence makes sense for a playwright whose stories focus on life\u2019s more understated people and locales. Though Baker lives in New York City, four of her plays, including \u201cCircle Mirror\u201d are set in Shirley, Vt. They all share similarly simple conceits: friends hanging around a coffee shop; a lesbian couple and their neurodivergent son hosting a nude photographer; a young man returning home to his mother and her video game-obsessed boyfriend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then there\u2019s the group of strangers in \u201cCircle Mirror,\u201d stumbling through theater exercises, tip-toeing out of their comfort zone. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Such a humble depiction of theater-making is a world apart from the culture Burcham found himself in a previous role as operations manager of the Pasadena Playhouse. Located outside of Los Angeles, the Playhouse has a longstanding reputation for staging acclaimed, original works, earning a regional theater award at the Tonys in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nonetheless, Burcham began to feel disillusioned with the Playhouse\u2019s \u201ccelebrity-driven theater,\u201d he said. After he and his wife had their daughter, now 3, they started to look for a new place to live, eventually settling on the Upper Valley. Burcham\u2019s wife found work at King Arthur Baking Company, and he got the sales and marketing gig at Northern Stage. <\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Northern Stage, with its $4.5 million operating budget and vast real estate footprint in White River Junction, is a big fish in the Upper Valley\u2019s theater scene, it\u2019s a scrappy community theater compared to some of the Goliaths Burcham was used to in Los Angeles, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Throughout his two years at the company, Burcham has gotten his hands dirty. He\u2019s taught classes, stage managed and performed in shows including last year\u2019s production of \u201cCome From Away.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While living in White River Junction, Burcham\u2019s also explored the area\u2019s other theater companies, including Parish Players, where he still considers himself a newcomer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The five-person cast of \u201cCircle Mirror,\u201d meanwhile, features seasoned Upper Valley actors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Darby Hiebert, who plays class instructor Marty, has performed over the years at Parish Players and BarnArts Center for the Arts, and Jon Protas, who plays James, Marty\u2019s husband, performed in Shaker Bridge Theatre\u2019s \u201cEureka Day\u201d last fall. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Among the cast are also Dartmouth graduates Gwendolyn Dae Roland and Chloe Jung, who play drama class participants Theresa and Lauren. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey have brought, since day one, so much joy into the room,\u201d Burcham said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All the actors have also shown focus throughout the rehearsal process, he added. They\u2019re respectful and take direction well, which isn\u2019t always a given even in big theater companies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey are beyond professionals,\u201d Burcham said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cCircle Mirror Transformation\u201d is in production at Parish Players on June 11<\/em>\u2013<em>21 at the Eclipse Grange Theatre in Thetford. For tickets ($15-$25) go to parishplayers.org.<\/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>THETFORD \u2014 The first time J. Bailey Burcham saw\u00a0Annie Baker\u2019s play \u201cCircle Mirror Transformation,\u201d he hated it.\u00a0 At the time, he was an ambitious theater student in Kansas, and a show about an amateur drama class struck him as petty and insulting to the art form\u2019s potential. \u201cI was so angry about it,\u201d Burcham said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2453248,"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":[469982,369626,22672,379889,379891],"class_list":["post-2453247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment-highlights","tag-homecenterpiece2","tag-latest-news","tag-thetford-vt","tag-white-river-junction-vt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Circle-Mirror-Transformation-opens-at-Parish-Players.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453247","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=2453247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2453249,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453247\/revisions\/2453249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2453248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}