Director and producer Brendon Fox will be coming on board as the new artistic director of Peterborough Players.

“I’m very excited for the future at the Players, to build on the past, and grow the future. It is a huge gift for an incoming leader to have the incredible ‘village’ that has been put in place by Chuck Morey, from the actors to the people who make the sets and costumes and do the marketing,” Fox said Saturday during the matinee of “Man of La Mancha,” the sold-out last show of the Players’ 2024 season. 

After the departure of Tom Frey, Morey served as interim producing artistic director for the 2024 season during the search committee process to find a new artistic director.

“We're delighted to have him on board,” Morey said.

Fox comes to the Players from outside of Worcester, Mass., where his wife, Kathryn Moncrief, is a distinguished professor and head of humanities and arts at Worcester Polytechnic Institute . A longtime freelance director, Fox has worked nationally and internationally at theater companies including the Prague Shakespeare Company, The Julliard School, Cleveland Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Long Wharf Theater, Portland Center Stage and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. He has also directed students in productions and taught master classes at Juilliard, the University of  Virginia and the University of North Carolina. He taught at FSU and Washington College in Maryland, where he met Moncrief. 

“We met through Shakespeare,” Fox said. “I was teaching it in then theater department, and Kathryn was teaching it in the English department, so we decided to get together and talk about it, and we’ve been together 10 years.”

A New England native, Fox is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with one of the region’s famed summer stock theaters. Over the course of the Players interview process, he came to realize his work was a perfect fit for the Players’ tradition.

“I realized, learning more about the Players, that I had done a lot of these plays and that the Players really fits my philosophy. I love repertory theater and the whole concept of the actors as chameleons, that the audience sees actors in one role on week, and in the next show, doing something completely different,” Fox said. 

Fox said that in the time he has spent being around the Players, he deeply appreciates the local audience.

“This is a very smart audience; they lean in,” he said. “You can tell this is an audience that really loves theater. I’m looking forward to getting involved with the community and finding out what people want to see on the stage.” 

Fox said his plans for the Players include reviving the shows from the Second Company – the youth theater summer program which closed down during COVID – in addition to the regular five-show season. Fox has spent decades mentoring and working with youth, an investment he considers essential to the future of live theater. 

“We're hoping to bring back shows for all ages with the Second Company, and we’re also hoping to bring back the internships for students and have those mentorships embedded in the company – in theater but also in tech, design, and administration, all parts of the production,” Fox says.

Fox feels live theater is especially important, given the amount of time young people spend on phones and devices. 

“Live theater is irreplaceable for kids. Theater is a giant empathy machine; we get to walk in the actors’ shoes, to experience what they experience, to really be in that story,” Fox said. “We’re sitting in the dark and facing the light, almost like a primeval campfire. There is no other place we sit in the dark with strangers and laugh together and have that bond together.”

Looking forward to the 2025 season, Fox likens a successful theater season to “a really great menu.” 

“I believe in powerful stories, powerfully told. I love stories that keep people on their toes. We want to serve up stories people will recognize, and we want to build trust to maybe get them to try that show they have not seen before. The season will include a real mix – joy, comedy, mysteries. We may do a musical next summer, we may have a wild card.” 

Fox says he is drawn to “juicy language,” as well as to plays with strong female characters. 

“Edith Bond Stearns, the founder of the Players,  had a vision when she decided to bring people here to watch theater and bring people to this very special place. I’m honored and excited to be a part of the next chapter of that vision,”  he said.