A conversation with Historic Deerfield’s Claire Carlson, Producing Artistic Director Patrick Gabridge, and Producer and Playwright Talya Kingston of Plays in Place about A Stake in the Ground: 1774, commissioned by Historic Deerfield. To be published in the Summer 2026 issue of the Historic Deerfield Magazine.
Claire: Can you tell our readers about Plays in Place? What is unique about the plays you write and produce?
Talya: Plays in Place is a theatre company that produces original site-specific theatre in collaboration with museums and historic sites. As playwrights, rather than starting with a story from our own imaginations, we begin our conversation with experts at the sites who tell us stories, show us their spaces, and give us access to primary source materials.
Patrick: Our work is always grounded in place. So we’re trying to understand the space where we’re performing and how our characters existed in it. The project partnerships usually require a time span of multiple years from inception to production, so everyone is making a big commitment.
Claire: What is your process once you have a site to work with? What inspires and challenges you? How do you develop the specific themes and structures of your plays?
Patrick: Every site has a story, sometimes more than one, and every place is different. We are presented with the puzzle of what is the best story to develop into a play, and how do we make it work in a way that is theatrically engaging for audiences while taking advantage of the particular elements of that specific place. Solving those challenges is always exciting for us.
We create a lot of plays that center around slavery and abolition in New England, as well as plays in the Revolutionary War period, and also plays dealing with women’s history and the fight for women’s suffrage. So we have a strong interest in exploring issues of race and gender. We are always trying to develop characters in ways that highlight their full humanity, their complexity. We try to “unflatten” historical figures and moments.
Claire: Can you describe what “in place” means to you and your company? How does the setting guide you as you write the plays and bring the characters to life?
Patrick: We really are trying to find ways to use the site, almost as an additional character. Our mantra as playwrights in writing site-specific plays is “Don’t fight the site.” Use the place. We don’t build sets; we don’t add banks of lights. Our main design elements are costumes and sound. Even if the site isn’t exactly as it was in the era of the story we’re telling, we still try to use it as it is at this very moment.
This doesn’t mean that every show needs to operate in a completely realistic style. But it does require us to be thoughtful about how time and place operate in our plays. Because our work is always a commission, we’re always building from the ground up, so the script and its relationship to the physical space is not “generic,” not just written to be done on any stage, anywhere. Our work is specifically tailored to where we’re at, and we use the inherent meaning that the space and its history brings.
Claire: How do you approach interpreting hard topics in your plays such as votes for women or the history of slavery in New England?
Patrick: The main thing is that we’re not looking at the “issues” first, we’re looking at the people. What can we find out about them through research, which is often limited because their records might not have been preserved? How do we fill the gap if they might not have had the time or resources to create documents that recorded their thoughts? We can learn details about them – births, deaths, baptisms – that help paint a portrait of them as people with full lives. We have to use the historical record and also our imaginations. A lot of time we find things that historians have overlooked, little tidbits, because we’re asking different questions, we’re looking with a different lens. We need to understand everything we can about the periods we’re writing about, talk to lots of historians, read books, examine the archives, but then go back to what we as playwrights know about how people behave in relationship to each other.
Claire: How do you balance your vision with feedback from the host sites, directors, and actors?
Talya: The collaboration between writers/producers, artists (actors, designers and directors) and the site historians and stakeholders continues at all stages of the play’s development. We first present a proposal for a play (or series of plays) and solicit feedback (sometimes even going back to the drawing board). After we write a solid first draft we hire actors for an internal reading of the script and conduct a post-show discussion wherein we discuss any plot holes, historical inconsistencies or character problems. This feedback helps us to come up with a more solid script draft to take into production.
As playwrights we tend to prioritize historical or contextual feedback over artistic critique from the historical experts. It is helpful to bring a director in early in the process to help the writers to see how their writing can be actualized given the confines of performing in a non-traditional space (for example, plays that are performed outside cannot use blackouts for scene changes!) Actors are very helpful in letting us know if the language is too convoluted or the relationships between characters too hard to understand.
Through it all, the playwrights need to have a strong grasp of the story they are telling in order to incorporate feedback without flattening the dramatic impact.
Claire: What can audiences expect at the plays you are doing for Historic Deerfield?
Talya: At Historic Deerfield we were drawn to the backdrop of the street, and how, in the lead up to the Revolution, neighbors had very different perspectives on what the future of the country should look like. In this hot political climate, the neighbors were also intertwined personally with love affairs, rivalries, and feuds. Audiences can expect these characters to come to life in a way that will leave them with questions and a new appreciation for the history of the town as it headed towards Revolution.
Patrick: The key thing is that this is a lively experience, it’s not a lecture or history lesson. It’s a play that tells an interesting story about people we hope you will care about. Our goal is that people see our show and come away wanting to learn more because now this place and these people matter to them.
A Stake in the Ground: 1774
Staged at Historic Deerfield, A Stake in the Ground: 1774 is a series of three site-specific plays, set in Deerfield, on the eve of the American Revolution. Get your tickets here.
In the summer of 1774, seeds of revolution began to germinate in Deerfield when a Liberty Pole is brought to town. The characters in three new one-act plays explore the political division, tangled family relations, and the complexities of enslavement from all sides. Join us this summer to experience this vibrant, immersive examination of the historical split that will define America.
Produced by Plays in Place, written by Talya Kinston, Valyn Lyric Turner, and Patrick Gabridge, and directed by Brianna Sloane, A Stake in the Ground: 1774 will be performed outdoors at the locations near where the characters lived in the past, including outside the Ashley House, the Allen House, and the Stebbins House.
Each performance includes all three plays and will end with a post-show conversation. Shows take place Fridays (6:30–8:30 p.m.), Saturdays (6:30–8:30 p.m.), and Sundays (2:30–4:30 p.m.), July 10–August 16.
Note: All shows (except for the weekend of July 31, August 1 and 2 held inside the Deerfield Community Center) will be held outside and the audiences will be walking to each location.
Please visit historic-deerfield.org/events/a-stake-in-the-ground-1774 for more information and to purchase tickets.
