By: Sherry Stregack Lutken
Sherry Stregack Lutken, conceiver, co-writer, and director, reflects on the collaborative journey behind The Porch on Windy Hill: a new play with old music, the Drama Desk-nominated play she created alongside Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse, and David Lutken. What began as a spark of inspiration during the uncertainty of the pandemic evolved, through the support of regional theaters, artistic partners, and an expanding creative community, into a resonant new work that has earned two 2026 Drama Desk Award nominations. In this personal essay, Lutken traces the path of the production’s development while celebrating the generosity, risk-taking, and shared artistry that made the show possible.
It is a tremendous honor to be acknowledged for this play and for five years of collective creative energy. It has caused me to reflect on how we got here, from that first sparkle of an idea, the excitement and hope of what this story could be, to where Lisa, Morgan, David, and I find ourselves today. I also think about all the people and institutions that helped make any of this a reality. To me, it represents a new understanding of collaboration.
Our process has been unique, a variation on a modern actor-musician theater theme, and one I encourage others to try. We wanted to tell a specific, original story that would invite audiences in, with music that is intrinsic to the story and inside the lives of the characters. We also wanted to create a story in which people could see themselves in ways large and small, comfortable and uncomfortable, good and bad.
Our group came together somewhat by accident during an unprecedented time. Our subsequent journey is really the story of all the people who kept us moving forward with their contributions, support, and generosity along the way.
Regional theater has been key to this process, and not just one large or well-funded institution. In this case, five different theaters of varying size and scale stepped in at a time when all of us were trying to answer the question, “What next?”
The Ivoryton Playhouse in Essex, Connecticut, is where our playwright story began. In April 2021, Artistic Director Jacqui Hubbard gave us a quick green light for a replacement production that September. At that point, we had barely begun shaping the basis and bones of the story. What would have normally been scheduled as a workshop instead became a challenge and a rare opportunity to see a brand-new work fully realized on a short timetable. All four of us accepted, and what we learned in those months of fast, experimental writing, and from that first plunge in front of audiences during the still-shaky COVID fall season, cannot be overstated.
The next opportunity came almost immediately from The New Ohio’s Now in Process. That gave us a chance to use what we had learned for rewrites, rethinking, edits, and fixes, and to share our play with music over Zoom because of, and in spite of, the Omicron wave in early 2022.
From there came a tremendous second wave of encouragement and direct next steps from friends and colleagues. In a compressed retelling, BJ Jones, Courtney Sale, and Susanna Gellert, the artistic directors at Northlight Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, and Weston Theater Company, respectively, joined together to combine the limited resources available to each of them for all of us. That included money from a Fund for New Works, housing, space to work and rehearse safely, assistance in securing a dramaturg, criticism, feedback, new perspectives, designers, and actors. These were all essential to the development and growth of our play, with the work focused together for everyone’s benefit.
That support led to three further productions, with People’s Light also joining in, along with two developmental workshops in 2023 and 2024. The path then brought us to Urban Stages in New York for two runs and two Drama Desk nominations.
New work does not grow in isolation. Playwrights, theaters, producers, donors, and audiences must decide to take a chance together. Regional theaters, in particular, remain among the few places where performing artists can still be given the time, trust, resources, and room to experiment, fail, rewrite, and uncover what a play or musical truly is, or has the potential to become.
The artist’s way is to learn by doing. Workshops and readings can get you most of the way, but until you dig into a full production and share it with an audience, becoming part of that theater’s community, you are still seeing the work in a space that is somewhat hypothetical.
If we want new American plays and musicals to thrive, we must continue to rethink the pipeline by building partnerships that welcome and support artists in process. These partnerships can provide regional theaters with new works and new visions to share with their communities and the larger theater family.
The Porch on Windy Hill exists because so many people opened their doors to us when we knocked. Once a work is shared with the world, it is no longer really yours alone. The path of The Porch on Windy Hill has been a deeply satisfying collaborative experience, and one we are grateful to share. I hope our journey encourages others to do the same for the next generation of storytellers finding their way forward.
