Northborough native Josh Telepman is bringing his talents back to the stage with his theatre company Yorick Ensemble. A production of “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder will be held on the Northborough Town Green, located at 45 West Main Street, on Thursday, Sept. 2-Saturday, Sept. 4 at 7 pm. Admission is free; all you need to do is bring a seat.
Telepman is a 2013 Algonquin Regional High School graduate and 2017 Emerson College graduate. He founded his own theatre company in 2019. He loves outdoor theatre and has attended Shakespeare on the Common in Boston and Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte in New York for years.
“I have been looking for a way to do something like that on a smaller scale,” he said.
Bringing this particular production to his hometown is no accident. He said that Our Town has always had a special place in his heart since reading it in class as a high school sophomore.
Additionally, he felt excited that one of his first forays back into live theatre after the last year and a half would be focused on community.
“When I saw the new town common after coming home from college, my immediate thought was that it was a perfect spot to do a play,” said Telepman. “These past months I’ve been focused on finding beauty in what’s already around me. As I’m preparing to move out of my childhood home this fall, I was feeling nostalgic, and wanted to give one last love letter to my home town.”
Yorick Ensemble seeks to break the mold of tradition.
“We don’t run on a season model, we don’t have a board of directors, we don’t have our own space” said Telepman. “We have the freedom to do smaller, weirder projects when inspiration strikes.”
He notes on the theatre’s website that “great theatre comes not from big budgets, but from great people,” and he seeks “to make creative, engaging, and surprising work that will enrich actors and audiences alike.”
He is excited to have been able to have the opportunity to work with a larger, multigenerational cast for the Our Town production. Actors are from from Hudson, Waltham, Mendon, Worcester, Framingham, Billerica, as well as Northborough and Southborough. The cast list is below and biographies can be found on Facebook.
Since rehearsals started over the summer, a few challenges have been encountered.
“The biggest challenge of this project has been doing everything outside and on the cheap,” Telepman said. “We have to build our own rigs to hold all of the lights, for instance. We also have been rehearsing in the intense heat outside rather than in an air-conditioned theater, and we have to cancel rehearsals when it rains.”
He started directing in high school at age 17 and continued his study of acting and directing at Emerson College. This is the sixth full production he has directed, along with many other readings, workshops, and smaller projects. His first project was The Pirates of Penzance and was performed at The Rockwell in Boston in January 2020.
By Liz Nolan, Contributing Writer
