‘Mary Jane’ at Bridge Street Theatre offers challenges
“Mary Jane” at Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill runs Thursday, May 22 to June 1. (Photo by John Sowle)
By Bob Goepfert
PUBLISHED: May 21, 2025 at 11:00 AM EDT
CATSKILL, N.Y. — Bridge Street Theatre has a reputation for producing work that is challenging for both actors and audiences.
It builds on that reputation with its current offering “Mary Jane.” It runs at its Catskill theater from Thursday, May 22 to Sunday, June 1.
Playing the title role is Amy Crossman, an Actors’ Equity member who has a lot of experience performing the works of Shakespeare.
One of her specialized background skills is clowning. Thus, it’s a surprise that she has played that type of role in only one of his plays. She reveals her past includes more ingenue-type characters than comedic roles.
A synopsis of “Mary Jane” might have you wonder how her background will be helpful in playing Mary Jane. The character is a 30-something year old woman who is caring for her two-year-old son who has a disease that will certainly take his life very early.
Adding to her dilemma is she faces the challenges of day-to-day caregiving as a single mother. Her husband could not handle the stress and left her and their child. It appears to be neither funny nor Shakespearean.
Crossman disagrees, and believes her training is perfectly suited for this dramatic role. “People don’t really understand clowning,” she explains. “It’s really about learning how to live truthfully and finding the light in your body. The path to laughter is through freedom and joy. This permits you to find humor in the darkest moments of life.”
Without trying to pitch the play as a comedy, she insists that there are many moments at which the audiences will laugh. “This is not just a dreary, morose work about loss. I see it as a simple, beautiful, uplifting and hopeful play.“
She explains that a lot of that humor comes from the genuinely nice, eager to please, and wanting to be loved Mary Jane, who interacts with eight other actors. The others in the play include doctors, home nurses, relatives and other mothers in similar situations.
Crossman says that the cast consisting of “female-identifying actors and director has resulted in a sense of shared sisterhood.”
One theme discovered by the actors through similar experiences are how patients are spoken to in hospitals. Crossman points out that everyone calls her ‘Mom’, not by her name.
She says small things like this are steps to a caregiver losing their identity. “It’s one small marker to having your identity taken away. In time of great loss, it is important not to lose yourself as well,’ she says.
It’s Crossman’s opinion that though the loss of a child makes the work especially poignant, the focus on caregiving makes it universal. She even believes it speaks to how to endure collective grief and trauma.
Explaining her thought, she continues, saying, “After coming out of COVID we are all searching for connection. Add to that all the collective drama taking place in the world and you realize somehow we’ve all become caregivers to each other. A trait that helps us survive in such times is resiliency. That defines Mary Jane. This play is a lesson on how to love and care for one another.”
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“Mary Jane” at Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill runs Thursday, May 22 to June 1. For tickets and schedule go to bridgest.org