REAL ESTATE is an experimental play about moving houses, and it runs October 15–17 at 7pm at The Barn at Lee, 345 Spring St., Lee, Massachusetts. It was written, choreographed and directed by Isa Spector, and it arrives in the Berkshires after two sold-out runs in New York. General admission is $25, and according to The Berkshire Edge, no one is turned away for lack of funds.
The premise sounds ordinary. Two men, David and Robert, move from one house to another. What makes it experimental is how the movement happens: the play follows the pair as they "move houses, move bodies, and move around their desires," musing on the pleasure and plight of relocation. If you have ever packed a kitchen and wondered why the whole exercise feels stranger than it should, that is the territory this show works.
For readers who plan their year around the water, a land-bound evening in a converted barn may seem an odd detour. But relocation is the quiet theme behind every charter season: what you bring, what you leave, what it costs to set up somewhere new. The same questions that fill a week's packing list run through this play at theatre scale. This connects to our earlier piece, What to pack for a week's charter (and what to leave at the airport).
What kind of play is REAL ESTATE?
It is experimental theatre, which here means the story is carried by more than dialogue. Spector is a writer, choreographer and director, and the New York Times praised the show for its "witty wordplay puzzles full of choreographic twists." In plain terms: expect language games and physical movement to do equal work, rather than a conventional scene-by-scene plot.
The two characters, David and Robert, are played by Ari Dalbert and Sheldon Donenberg. The material facts about the production are few and simple: one writer-director, two performers, a running run of three evenings, each starting at 7pm. There is no interval information, no age guidance and no runtime listed in the available reporting, so check with the venue if timing matters to your evening.
What is it actually about?
Moving. The play takes the most mundane domestic event — putting your things in boxes and going somewhere else — and treats it as a subject worth examining. The characters "muse on the pleasure and plight of relocation," which is a fair description of how most people actually experience a move: part excitement, part grief, part comedy of lost tape guns.
Anyone who has shifted their life aboard for a season knows the feeling. A first night in a new place carries its own mixture of nerves and appetite, whether that place is a rented house in Lee or a guest cabin on passage. The play's appeal, on the evidence available, is that it takes that mixture seriously while keeping it funny. Readers following this should also see Your first night passage: what to expect as a guest.
Where and when can you see it?
The practical details, as listed by The Berkshire Edge:
- Dates: October 15–17, one show each night at 7pm.
- Venue: The Barn at Lee, 345 Spring St., Lee, Massachusetts.
- Tickets: general admission $25, with a no-one-turned-away policy for lack of funds.
- Credits: written, choreographed and directed by Isa Spector; featuring Ari Dalbert and Sheldon Donenberg.
Lee sits in the Berkshires, western Massachusetts, a region that draws a cultural crowd each autumn. If your route to the coast runs through New England in October, this is a compact evening's outing: a single barn, a single price, a single hour slot to plan around.
Why did it sell out in New York?
The available evidence is the New York Times's praise for the show's "witty wordplay puzzles full of choreographic twists" and the report of two sold-out runs in New York. That is the honest extent of what can be said: the show found an audience in the city, and the run that followed it to Massachusetts is the same production. No awards list, no star names, no further critical record appears in the reporting, so treat the sold-out runs as the track record and the Times notice as the critical signal.
Quiet skepticism is due on any arrival billed by its past success; here the billing is modest and checkable. The claim is not that the play is a landmark. It is that a small experimental show about moving houses did well enough twice in New York to travel.
Who should go, and who should skip it?
Go if you like theatre that plays with form — language treated as a puzzle, movement treated as argument. Go if you are in the middle of your own move and want it laughed at. The $25 admission and the no-one-turned-away policy make the risk of an unfamiliar evening small.
Skip it if you want a conventional play with a clear plot and a tidy ending. An experimental two-hander about relocation, praised for wordplay and choreography, will not behave like an evening of straight drama. That is the point, and it is also the warning.
The season's wider question — what a new place costs, what it asks of you, what you carry and what you abandon — is one this magazine keeps asking from the deck side. The pleasure of the life aboard calendar is that it occasionally points inland. For three nights in October, the answer is a barn in Lee.
