By Dan Murphy
A short play written by Beacon Hill resident Rob Whitney will be among eight works featured in the two-day New Works Festival 2026, which kicks off Saturday, Jan. 24, at The Firehouse Center for the Arts in Newburyport.
Over the past few years, Whitney and his wife, Marcy Axelrad, have regularly attend small theatre performances at the nonprofit Firehouse Center, along with Lyric Stage Boston in the Back Bay and Calderwood Hall in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, among other venues.
After the couple attended a performance at The Firehouse Center, Whitney went to the organization’s website and learned of its upcoming New Works Festival. He decided then to try his hand as a first-time playwright.
Via the application procedure, Whitney went online and picked hockey from a number of provided selections as the category for his piece. He began the writing process by dictating it in a stream-of-consciousness manner, before printing the first draft and refining it over time.
Whitney submitted the script for his short play, called ‘Puck,’ for consideration in the festival around May but didn’t learn it had been selected until around the end of November. The submissions had all been read and were then selected by a group of three judges, none of whom was aware of the identities of the respective authors, according to Whitney.
“I was shocked and kind of excited,” said Whitney of learning that his short play had been chosen for inclusion in the upcoming festival.
‘Puck’ focuses on a conversation between a father and his hockey-playing son in a basement of a Beacon Hill townhouse.
“It’s a comedy-drama. Something happens, and the father and son have a conversation about the son’s ability to continue playing hockey,” said Whitney.
While Whitney himself never played hockey(he played soccer in his youth instead), his son, Adam, now an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Tennessee, began playing the game at around age 6 in the North End Youth Hockey at Steriti Skating Rink.
Adam continued playing the game through high school, and Whitney admits that much of the dialogue in ‘Puck’ mirrors conversations he had with his son over the years.
“Some of the dialogue, the funny stuff, is what my son and I talked about,” said Whitney.
For the upcoming performances, ‘Puck’ will be directed by Arlene Bernard, with two unidentified actors as the father and son. Keeping in line with the other short-length plays featured in the festival, it’s one act and runs about nine and a half minutes long. The same eight plays in the festival, including ‘Puck,’ will be staged again at the theatre during a matinee festival performance on Jan. 25.
Meanwhile, Whitney, an attorney by profession, is already now at work in his spare time on his next short play, which will focus on a conversation between two people at a Downtown Boston coffee shop, and looking ahead, he said he hopes to write a longer play focusing on a courtroom trial.
Firehouse Center for the Arts’ New Works Festival 2026 takes place Friday, Jan. 24, from 7-9 p.m. and again on Saturday, Jan. 25, from 2-4 p.m. at The Firehouse Center for the Arts, located at 1 Market Square in Newburyport.
Tickets are $15 general admission and can be purchased online at $15 online via the Firehouse’s website at firehouse.org.