Poet on a String


Written by Richard Vetere; Directed by Amber Brooke

American Theatre of Actors  | 314 W 54th St, New York, NY 10019

April 1, 2026 - April 12, 2026


It’s 1939 in Frenchtown, New Jersey - a riverside town of fewer than 1,200 residents - where three writers at wildly different points in their careers settle in for what they hope will be a quiet, introspective weekend. But these are not obscure or emerging artists; they are figures at the center of a cultural and historical explosion.

Richard Vetere’s Poet on a String brings together the influential James Agee (poet, novelist, and journalist) with Delmore Schwartz, the celebrated poet and short-story writer, and his wife and muse, Gertrude Buckman, herself an essayist and editor searching for a way to claim her own artistic path. Their triangle of overlapping ambitions, fraying love, and compulsion is the center of the play. They drink too much, dream too loudly, and bruise one another emotionally in the process, embodying the combustible dynamics of artists who love art as fiercely as they love themselves.

Vetere writes with an intimacy and volatility that any artist will recognize. Anyone who has ever sat in a late‑night conversation about theatre, literature, or visual art knows how these exchanges begin: poised, intellectual, sympathetic. Then quickly they can spin into narcissistic chaos. Here, the descent comes fast. With alcohol loosening tongues and inflaming insecurities, the weekend becomes a crucible of despair, bravado, longing, and creative conflict. Layer the tortured-artist psyche over all of this and the pressure becomes inescapable.

Amber Brooke  smartly traps the characters in a single space with only two exits: one to the bedrooms and one to the outside world. The effect is both literal and metaphorical - there is nowhere to go, either from each other or from themselves. Even Frenchtown, perched on the western edge of New Jersey with its bridge to Pennsylvania, feels like a place that refuses to let them slip away.

Brooke’s’ portrayal of Gertrude, in particular, emerges as a woman navigating limited options, fighting to be seen beyond her role as muse while the emotional gaslighting surrounding her grows increasingly suffocating.

Employing a rotating cast, tonight’s cast features Amber Brookes (doubling as director and Gertrude Buckman), San Cruz (Delmore Schwartz), and Joseph Monseur (James Agee), who together create a tightly wound and compelling ensemble.

As the world outside stands on the brink of World War II, Poet on a String captures an equally seismic cultural shift within American letters. Vetere explores the tension between the long‑held supremacy of the written word and the fast‑rising influence of cinema—a changing of the artistic guard embodied in these three volatile, brilliant figures.

The result is a searing, historically rooted drama about genius, ego, and the cost of creating art at the dawn of a new American era.

Review by Malini Singh McDonald.

Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on April 13, 2026. All rights reserved.

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