The Big News!

Beau Jest is celebrating its 25th anniversary of making theater with two special events. Join us in Boston June 18-20 at the Charlestown Working Theater for a fundraiser featuring Outward Bound, a staged reading by the We're Not Dead Yet Players (Beau Jest company members). Come hear the play which noted theater critic Alexander Woolcott described by saying "ink-stained little critical yardsticks are of pitifully little use when it comes to measuring the impalpable things which make Outward Bound so stirring and quickening an adventure. It is packed with wonder and it wrings the heart". We've always been fond of this play, and want to share it with the public in order to raise funds for...

A Tennessee Williams world-premiere. In the fall, Beau Jest has been invited to present the world premiere of a Tennessee William's play called The Remarkable Rooming House Of Madame LeMonde in Provincetown and Boston in September. For more details, visit the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival at http://www.twptown.org/index.html

Also, view videos from Beau Jest's past on our new videos page.

Recent Projects!

Samurai 7.0
Our most recent full length work, which premiered in Boston in 2006 and toured to the Piccolo Spoleto Theater Festival in Charleston, SC in 2007, was inspired by the epic film "The Seven Samurai". We used the story as a launching point for a contemporary theatrical experiment with music, movement, puppetry, lighting, and our own cinematic language for the stage to explore the resonance of the film, the number seven, and the ways in which we could evoke a celluloid world. The production was nominated for a 2007 Elliot Norton award.

Watch the Samurai 7.0 Trailer!

small (iPod) trailer (6.8 MB)   large trailer (16.2 MB)

The Boston Globe says...
"SAMURAI 7.0 is funny, poetic, and grand. It's epic. It's slight. It's silly. It's profound. It's "Samurai 7.0: Under Construction," and it's 70 minutes of quietly dazzling invention by Beau Jest Moving Theater...

The Boston Herald says...
" Judy Gailen's set design is an intriguing balance of opulence and simplicity."

Bill Marx from WBUR Radio says...
"Samurai 7.0" is not a version of the movie so much as a sly meditation on how theatre should be inspired by comradeship and artistry rather than money and razzle dazzle."

The Boston Phoenix says...
"What director Robinson and his co-creators want to enshrine here is physicalized imagination and the "simple skill" put forward by Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream, referred to in the Samurai 7.0 epilogue, and, one hopes, not gone the way of the dodo. Or to Bowdoin."

Now available!

The Physical Comedy Handbook,
by Beau Jest Artistic Director Davis Robinson.

"My personal favorite: Of all the area's small theaters, Beau Jest has the most identifiable and original artistic vision, developing an elastic form of lyrical slapstick that ranges from the magically sentimental to the witheringly satiric... Beau Jest's inventive staging did what all art does- it creates a pleasurable new world of its own." -Bill Marx, Boston Globe

Beau Jest is one of New England's premiere theater companies, known for their imaginative productions and a joyous physical acting style. Winners of the 1995 Boston Theater Award, they have long been recognized for their creative approach to theater. Whether taking a full year to create an original work, or interpreting an existing script, the company brings their trademark blend of physical imagery and innovative staging to every show.

A strong streak of optimism runs through all of Beau Jest's work, and a willingness to experiment with many styles. Mask and puppets, historical events, cabaret artists, cartoonists, tap dancers, choreographers, and composers have been but a few of the influences on the company's collaborations.

Beau Jest is an artist-run organization with a twenty-five year history of exploration and investigation into the role of the actor as creator, and the uses of movement and text to spark theatrical immediacy.

The artistic strength of their work has carried them to appearances around the country at prestigious festivals, three Off-Broadway runs, and hundreds of shows in theaters in the New England area. The desire for artistic freedom and a total personal investment by the actors in the quality of the work are major reasons for the company's existence. Beau Jest productions have been chosen Best of the Year by Boston area papers in 1985, 1987, 1989, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999 and 2006.

"A seamless ensemble, handling extremely eclectic material with seeming effortlessness. The snappiest satire since the vintage days of Saturday Night Live...polished to the point of near perfection." -Boston Globe