Hit House presents new play by Beacon writer

Shane Killoran wants to see more theater in Beacon and she’s doing something about it. With the help of writer Donna Minkowitz, she met Gwynne Watkins, a journalist who has written several popular children’s plays, including Space Pirates, which is performed around the world.

“I know this because of the royalty checks,” says Watkins, who is refining God’s Puppets, her first full-length play for adults. The two-act story centers on a Presbyterian pastor standing up for herself in the mid-1990s, just as right-wing evangelicals begin proselytizing to church youth groups.

An image from the play poster
An image from the play poster

A run-through on Wednesday (March 19) at the Howland Cultural Center will be the second installment of a performed reading series produced by Killoran’s Hit House Creative. The first in November featured works by five playwrights. She also put on The Vagina Monologues in 2023 and 2024.

Killoran got the bug to bring film and theater to Beacon and Newburgh before the pandemic, which delayed Hit House’s rollout. In December, she produced a David Lynch Christmas show at The Yard and is hosting a monthly film series at Safe Harbors across the river through July. A fringe theater festival in Newburgh is in the works for later this year.

Shane Killoran
Shane Killoran (Photo by Adriana Rossetto)

A “Greenwich Village girl” who moved to Beacon in 2015, Killoran studied for a doctorate in England that would have explored portrayals of women on the stage from 1918 to 1996. The degree path got paused but she is writing a play building on her research. “I wanted to analyze what scandalizes audiences — is it topic, nudity, language?” she says.

One notch on her resume includes work as a dramaturg, which she describes as being an historian for canonical plays by Euripides, Shakespeare and Chekov. Knowing how the roles and scenes have been portrayed throughout the years, she interprets and shapes a production with the goal of adhering to some semblance of accuracy.

The name Hit House derives from a shirt worn by Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones in the 1960s, says Killoran, who plans to open a brick-and-mortar collective to foster film screenings, plays and other programming.

For the March 19 reading, 10 actors with scripts in hand will provide movement and dramatic interpretation in response to music and lighting cues.

“I’m so glad I got a feminist play, and Gwynne is such a beautiful, powerful writer,” says Killoran. “It’s important for playwrights to hear their work instead of reading it on the screen or holding informal sessions sitting around their living room with friends.”

Watkins is a former freelance writer who interviewed celebrities like Dana Carvey and Tiffany Haddish. She moved to Beacon in 2011 and works with Compass Arts, an educational nonprofit.

Gwynne Watkins
Gwynne Watkins (Photo provided)

God’s Puppets is somewhat autobiographical. The daughter of a Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania, Watkins chafed as evangelists started “going after teens” around 30 years ago, she says.

The protagonist, pastor Pauline, whose husband is also a minister, resents being treated differently by congregants. She discovers the denomination’s “puppet ministry” and uses the characters to call out the negative depictions of women in the Bible as she speaks in a shrill voice. Pushback to these mini-dramas strains her marriage and leads to a crisis of faith.

Pauline’s dilemma boils down to: “Is God calling to her or does she have her own agenda and agency?” says Watkins. “I am so glad Shane is doing the heavy lifting. I don’t have to hire the actors, do publicity or go it alone. Playwrights usually need a lot of other people to bring their vision to life.”

The Howland Cultural Center is located at 477 Main St. in Beacon. Tickets for the staged reading of God’s Puppets, which begins at 7 p.m., are $10 at dub.sh/gods-puppets-HCC or at the door.

Behind The Story

Type: News

News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Marc Ferris is a freelance journalist based in Cortlandt. He is the author of Star-Spangled Banner: The Unlikely Story of America's National Anthem and performs Star-Spangled Mystery, a one-person musical history tour.