Ground UP Productions, the indie Off-Broadway company known for presenting readings and eclectic productions in New York City, is taking its act on the road for a residency at The Foundry in West Stockbridge, MA, where it will address no less than the end of the planet. Ground UP’s fellowship at The Foundry begins May 26 leading to June 5-6 performances of Chris Thorpe’s Treaty: A Play About How to Not Blow Up the World.

According to Ground UP, which presented an earlier version of the work in its 2024 Winter New Works Reading Festival in Manhattan, “the play is partly a story about the people on either side of the nuclear debate, and partly a conversation with the audience about how we find the space to talk about disarmament in our own lives.​​​​”

After a chance meeting with a disarmament expert, Manchester playwright-actor Chris Thorpe “fell into the world of nuclear treaty negotiation…and the ordinary people who are trying to achieve the extraordinary outcome of complete nuclear disarmament,” according to Ground UP notes.

The play — whose statistics are updated as political and global events shift — is based on conversations with organizations and individuals involved in disarmament negotiations. The punchy work has elements of political thriller, multimedia lecture, and docudrama.

Ground UP artistic director Kate Middleton and Laura Standley co-direct a company that includes Standley, Josh Evans, Stephen Heskett, Seth Shelden and T. Shyvonne Stewart.  The stage manager is Kodi Lynn Milburn, who is also composing music and designing sound and projections for the production.

Middleton told me, “Ground UP was sent this piece for the 2024 reading festival through founding member Seth Shelden. Seth knew London playwright Chris Thorpe from interactions with Thorpe’s one-man show Talking About the Fire, about the issue of nuclear disarmament, which has been touring Europe for quite a few years. Chris had a four-person version of the play and we were very interested in the immediate importance of the topic.”

In his civilian job away from being actor, Ground UP member Seth Shelden is the general counsel and United Nations Liaison for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the group that in 2017 won the Nobel Peace Prize in part for their work to advance the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

“It’s that treaty, the first-ever globally-applicable treaty that makes nuclear weapons categorically illegal, that the play Treaty is about,” Shelden said.

He added, “The play challenges its audience to rethink what they may think about one of the great existential threats of our time — whether a policy that they have been told all their lives makes them safe really makes them safe, and, if not, what can be done to reverse the status quo. By telling a real-life story about regular people who boldly pushed toward building something opposed by some of the world’s most powerful forces, the play asks its audience to consider that they too can help advance a solution to one of the world’s most entrenched and dangerous problems. There is a line in the play that articulates this best, I think, where Chris writes that this show is ‘about the fact that the decisions that restructure our lives, or completely destroy us, are made in rooms we have no agency in, by people who are separated from us by such a distance, we feel powerless to intervene. But also this show is about the fact that none of that’s true. They’re just rooms with people in them.’”

Shelden will also lead panel discussions related to the presentation.

Middleton said, “In 20 years of Ground UP’s history, I don’t think we’ve ever produced a play that so aspires to be both theatre and advocacy, nor have we ever had an opportunity to tell a story by featuring in the performance one of the story’s real-life protagonists — given Seth’s dual roles, both playing the main character in the play, as well as, in real life, being one of the people behind the treaty that Treaty is about. I couldn’t imagine a better way to serve the Ground UP mission, to bring to life ‘honest, intimate theatre . . . with the hope of inspiring change in our world.’”

A new Ground UP Education Outreach Program related to the play will begin in the fall in New England and beyond seeking “to inspire young adults to join the cause toward complete global nuclear disarmament.”

If you care about plays that address existential issues, or if you care about companies that passionately nurture new works, please consider a tax-deductible donation to Ground UP. (My plays Tennessee Williams Drank Here and Ten Minutes On a Bench — as well as works by Alex Webb, Jeff Talbott, Shelley McPherson, Dianne Nora, Jordan Reeves and others — all received attention in past Ground UP reading festivals.)

Treaty is made possible with the financial support of The Foundry, Ground UP, ticket buyers, generous donors and supporters like you. For Treaty ticket information, visit The Foundry.

Learn more about Ground UP Productions.

The workshopping opportunity in the Berkshires will prove invaluable, Middleton said.

“We have constantly updated the factual information to reflect where the world is in the process of these ratifications and the final goal of the treaty,” she explained. “We’re building some character arcs and clarifying scenes to make it more present and moving.”

She added, “Chris Thorpe has been wonderful at communication and allowances to make the show more up-to-date and relatable to an American audience. The topic of the possibility for change is what matters, and Chris has been so supportive of keeping that the end goal, above all else.”

What’s the biggest question the play asks?

“The premise is that everyone can help create change,” Middleton said. “However in order to do so, we must first accept that these things that are hurling us into a future of nuclear warfare are indeed actually happening. If the world can admit that, then we can all contribute to the change that is possible. But will the world acknowledge the truth around them when it’s so much easier to not discuss it? That is the question. In order to change things, the world has to accept some very hard truths.”

What’s ahead for this project?

Middleton explained, “We’re hoping to travel to colleges in New England with Treaty, and hopefully back to UNC Chapel Hill, the alma mater of our founding members. We are formatting an education program that can be simple or broad — long weekend, one afternoon, with a panel discussion, without, all versions for all budgets so that we can get this play seen as often as we can to ignite passion and activate young people to help the conversation continue and grow toward larger leaps to change.”