(LONG BRANCH, NJ) -- Marking the start of another extraordinary season dedicated to new voices and compelling stories, New Jersey Repertory Company (NJRep) launches its 28th season with the World Premiere of Make Believe by acclaimed playwright John Biguenet, directed by NJ Rep's Artistic Director SuzAnne Barabas. The production runs from February 13 to March 9, 2025. Make Believe is a nostalgic, haunting look back at the world of 1930's Hollywood, where larger-than-life movie stars went to great lengths to keep their secrets from coming to light.
The cast includes Quentin Chisholm (NJRep’s The Bookstore. Film: BORN2LOSE, West) and Éilis Cahill (The Road to Jerusalem. British indie film Mind-set) as Eleanor and Bailey as two lost souls who are thrown together to create a fantastical scenario that could only be dreamed up in Hollywood, the land of dreams.
John Biguenet, author of Broomstick, Rising Water, and numerous other works, brings his unique storytelling to NJ Rep once again. His accolades include the O. Henry Award, Harper’s Magazine Writing Award, and recognition in The Best American Short Stories. Biguenet’s works have been celebrated across the U.S. and internationally, solidifying his reputation as a master playwright and storyteller.
The production is helmed by SuzAnne Barabas, whose extensive directing credits at NJ Rep include The Housewives of Mannheim, Broomstick, The Adjustment, and more. A dedicated advocate for new works, Barabas brings her visionary direction to Make Believe, ensuring a season opener that audiences won’t forget.
Performances take place February 13 – March 9, 2025 on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:00pm, with additional matinees on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 2:00pm. Opening night is February 15, 2025 at 7:30pm. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.NJRep.org or contact the NJRep Box Office at (732) 229-3166. New Jersey Repertory Company is located at 179 Broadway in Long Branch, New Jersey.
The creative team includes set design by Jessica Parks, lighting design by Jill Nagle, technical direction by Brian Snyder, costume design by Patricia E. Doherty, and sound design by Nick Simone.
Upcoming World Premieres at NJ Rep include: Can't Run, Can't Dance by Gregg Henry (July 17 - August 10, 2025); How My Grandparents Fell in Love by Neil Berg and Cary Gitter (September 11 - October 5, 2025); and The Drop-Off by James Anthony Tyler (October 30 - November 23, 2025). Plays and dates subject to change Join them as NJ Rep continues its tradition of championing original works and cultivating new theatrical voices.
JOHN BIGUENET (Playwright) John Biguenet has published ten books, including Oyster: A Novel, The Torturer’s Apprentice: Stories, and Silence, a nonfiction study on the nature of silence, as well as Foreign Fictions, two volumes on literary translation, and Strange Harbors, an anthology of international literature in translation, and other books. Biguenet’s radio play Wundmale, which premiered on Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Germany’s largest radio network, was rebroadcast by Österreichischer Rundfunk, the Austrian national radio and television network. Two of his stories have been featured in Selected Shorts at Symphony Space on Broadway. The Vulgar Soul won the 2004 Southern New Plays Festival and was a featured production in 2005 at Southern Rep Theatre; he and the play were profiled in American Theatre magazine. Named its first guest columnist by The New York Times, Biguenet chronicled in both columns and videos his return to New Orleans after its catastrophic flooding in 2005 and the efforts to rebuild the city. Rising Water, set in an attic on the first night of the flood, was the winner of the 2006 National New Play Network Commission Award, a 2006 National Showcase of New Plays selection, and a 2007 recipient of an Access to Artistic Excellence development and production grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the 2008 Big Easy Theatre Award for Best Original Play; it has had numerous productions in the U.S. and abroad. Shotgun, the second play in his Rising Water cycle, premiered in 2009 at Southern Rep Theatre; it won a 2009 National New Play Network Continued Life of New Plays Fund Award and was a 2009 recipient of an Access to Artistic Excellence development and production grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. As part of the play’s NNPN Rolling World Premiere, productions were mounted in 2010 at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater and Florida Studio Theatre.
He was awarded a Marquette Fellowship for the writing of Night Train, which he then developed on a Studio Attachment at the National Theatre in London and later premiered at New Jersey Rep. Biguenet was named 2008 Theatre Person of the Year at the Big Easy Theatre Awards and received the Louisiana Writer Award, the state’s highest literary honor, in 2012. Mold, the third in his cycle of plays about the flooding of New Orleans and its aftermath, was produced in 2013 by Southern Rep Theatre and was published along with Rising Water and Shotgun in The Rising Water Trilogy in 2015. The trilogy has been called “the finest artistic achievement expressing the personal impact the flood had—and continues to have—on our lives today.” Also in 2013, New Jersey Rep presented the world premiere of Broomstick, the confessions of a witch (in rhymed iambic pentameter), as part of an NNPN Rolling World Premiere with later productions at Montana Rep, Artists Repertory Theatre, and The Fountain Theatre, where the play was selected as a Los Angeles Times Critics’ Pick.
In addition, Biguenet’s work has received an O. Henry Award and a Harper’s Magazine Writing Award among other distinctions, and his stories and essays have been reprinted or cited in The Best American Mystery Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Best American Short Stories, Best Music Writing, and The Best of the Best. His books and plays have been translated into a dozen languages.
SUZANNE BARABAS (Director) Most recently, SuzAnne directed the world premiere of Pen Pals in NYC and NJ with a rotating cast that includes Catherine Curtin, Sharon Lawrence, Nia Vardalos, Mary Beth Peil, Kate Burton, Pauletta Washington, Nancy McKeon and Johanna Day. Also in NYC at 59E59 Theaters the NY premiere of What Doesn't Kill You by James Hindman. For NJ Rep, SuzAnne directed the world premiere of The Two Hander (with Jill Eikenberry and Ella Dershowitz), Find Me a Voice (premiere), North Fork (premiere), Immortal Interlude (premiere), Octet (premiere), Till Morning Comes (premiere), Maggie Rose, Getting in Touch With My Inner B*tch (starring Christine Lavin, premiere), The Adjustment, 10% of Molly Snyder, Romulus Linney’s Klonsky & Schwartz, Apostasy (premiere), Women Who Steal, Apple (U.S. premiere), The Housewives of Mannheim (premiere), Evie’s Waltz, Dead Ringer (premiere), Steven Dietz’s Yankee Tavern, Puma (premiere), Night Train (premiere), Hummingbirds, Just In Time: The Judy Holliday Story, Bakersfield Mist, Annapurna, Happy, Broomstick (premiere), Lucky Me (premiere), Swimming at the Ritz (U.S. premiere), and The Realization of Emily Linder (premiere).
SuzAnne directed productions of The Housewives of Mannheim at 59E59 Theater (NYC), Ensemble Theater of Santa Barbara (CA), and Phoenix Theater (Indianapolis). In addition, she directed regional productions of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, The Fantasticks, The Roar of the Greasepaint the Smell of the Crowd, Cabaret, Shaw’s Heartbreak House, A.R. Gurney’s The Perfect Party, Marsha Norman’s ‘Night Mother, Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story, Christopher Durang’s Beyond Therapy, Mark Dunn’s Belles, Lee Blessing’s Down the Road among others. She is a member of Actors Equity Association, BMI, the Dramatists Guild, and SDC.
QUENTIN CHISHOLM (he/him). Select acting credits include: Theatre – The Bookstore (NJ Rep); Almost, Maine (HB Playwrights Theatre); Bulrusher (Dartmouth College), Faith, Hope and Charity (Dartmouth College); TV/Film – BORN2LOSE (dir. Carlos Cardona); West (dir. Micah Stuart); The Sound the Sea Makes (dir. Maria Paula Quesada); Keepsake (dir. Rachel Patrice). Quentin has studied acting at Terry Knickerbocker Studio, HB Studio, Stella Adler Studio of Acting, and Atlantic Acting School. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, where he was also a Division-1 soccer player. He would like to give special thanks to his family, as well as the teaching of Celestine Rae, TKS faculty, Sarah Gaboury, Judy Henderson, Rob Kolker, and Bonnie Shumofsky Bloom and Lucius Robinson at Stewart Talent.
ÉILIS CAHILL appeared in the world premiere of The Road to Jerusalem by Nicky Glossman and originated the role of Carmen in Safe Home at Shadowland Stages. She stars in the British indie film Mind-set directed by Mikey Murray, and an upcoming short film called Albert's Flower, directed by James Glossman. Éilis is thrilled to be here.
NEW JERSEY REPERTORY COMPANY (NJ Rep) was founded in 1997 by SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas. Its current central headquarters is the Lumia Theater, located on lower Broadway in Long Branch. The theater's mission is to develop and produce new plays and to make a lasting contribution to the American Stage. Over two decades, NJ Rep has produced 152 plays, of which 128 have been world premieres. The theater has the additional distinction of having had many of its plays produced by other theaters around the country, totaling over 200 subsequent productions in the US and overseas.
In 2012 and 2018, NJ Rep was the recipient of a National Theater Company Grant from the American Theater Wing that sponsors the annual Tony Awards for Broadway in recognition of its contribution to the repertoire of the American Stage. Only seven theaters have had this distinction.
In addition, the theater has presented over 400 developmental readings as well as introduced 136 new works through its Theatre Brut Short-Play Festivals that focus on visionary and avant-garde works. NJRep acquired a new property, a 28,000 square foot school situated on 2 ½ acres and located just five minutes from its Main Stage Lumia Theater and two blocks from the Jersey Shore. The theater plans on gradually transforming the school in stages into a cultural center that will house additional performance spaces, an art cinema, an art museum, a rooftop café, an arts education wing, and residences for out-of-town actors and playwrights. When completed, the center will present a wide array of programs in acting, playwriting, art, sculpture, poetry, music, and photography and will serve as a catalyst for economic development and as the foundation for the cultural renaissance of the community.
NJ Rep thanks the following for their support: The Community Foundation of New Jersey, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Shubert Foundation and The Stone Foundation of New Jersey.
