I'm Greg Josselyn.

I believe practicing theater is a path to kindness.

A great joy comes when we open a space for vulnerability without losing the comical and magical flair that makes us excited to be in the theater!

Director. Cat lover. Friend.

Cover photo: Betsey L. Josselyn edited with an archival photo from the New York Public Library Digital Collections,1956.

My favorite projects

SIX EPISODE RADIO DRAMA

La Sorprendente Fuga de María Pérez Inmaculada

Co-wrote and co-directed with Ekiwah Adler

Ekiwah and Maria have cerebral palsy and use wheelchairs. They live in a small rural town in Mexico. Everything's pretty boring – until one day, Ekiwah discovers Maria is missing. He calls her cell phone, then her mother, but no one answers. A week later, a notice appears on Facebook: she's been found, but still no one answers the phone. Gradually, through this theatrical documentary podcast, we find out the truth. Maria never disappeared. She had to escape her house to run off with the woman she loves, another woman in a wheelchair.

GREG SAYS:

❝ My challenge as director was to coach the actors in the process of telling their stories, working through their speech impediments and difficulties projecting their voice, and also, the entire podcast is in Spanish! ❞

Funded by the British Council and the Secretary of Culture in Mexico

Photo by Elizabeth Escobar

PANDEMIC ZOOM PLAY

Writer and Performer

Streamed online with Goldstar.com

❝ The show provides an amazing opportunity for audiences to talk openly about mental health issues at the workplace. ❞

🃏

Greg plays Joss, a jack of all trades. He knows how to do marketing, he sings, acts, dances, and directs. He studies divinity and applies successfully to places like Yale Divinity School. In college, he's a straight-A student. However, when it comes to completing a task over and over, he gets fired. Or fires himself. He embarks on the mystery of discovering his own mind, embracing the tremendous challenges and unsuspected creativity that comes with living with OCD. This solo performance experiments with the magic of everyday objects as a storytelling device. Pencils, paper bags, and manila envelopes take on an epic proportion!

GETTING REAL ON STAGE

❝ This is a deeply-personal biographical piece inspired by my time working in social service for older adults. I wrote, performed, and directed it with friends in two different performances in London and Somerville. ❞

Photos by Teresa DeAmicis

Greg's 'play' on aging

As a society, we're always advocating for a capitalist vision of success. It's never too late, we say. To make money, to be famous, to make it big, to live your dream! But what if beneath that mirage often there's a tremendous amount of pressure. Pressure to be someone! Pressure to work! Pressure to succeed!

The genius Emily Dickinson said it best: "I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog, to tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog!" What happens when we let ourselves let go of all that, simply lean back and enjoy our coffee, or notice the moth by the window? Is not that a success worth singing about? Don't the Eleanor Rigbys of the world deserve a song?

FIRST DRAFT

It's Never Too Late

Greg and his friends after the show at CPT

Camden People’s Theatre, UK

PREMIERE

Meaning of Life Acc. to Grease

with Augusta Alban, Kaia Jackson, Paula Bonnell

The Rockwell, Somerville

LOCAL PRESS BUZZ

Wicked Local and Somerville Times

FICTION

The Zandra Story

❝ I wrote and performed a character study that builds on It’s Never Too Late and Meaning of Life – diving deep into a fictional character named Zandra searching for meaning in the second act of her life. It took form in multiple genres. ❞

Tom, a millennial, lives in a tiny house. Browsing online, he finds Zandra, an older poet who immediately shifts him out of a depression. They develop an online friendship. He waits for her words of wisdom. But when Tom actually meets her, the image of her he had so carefully constructed falls to pieces and forces him to grapple with a darkness that coexists with Zandra's deep wisdom.

Illustration of Zandra by Max Chavarria

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

". . . Beautiful. Zandra was my favorite part. I know there's illustrations, but I know who I pictured when I read her parts." –Sasha Elise, Goodreads.com user review

Play version

Double Take Fringe, Greenfield, MA

Radio

PRX Podcast Garage Allston

Published fiction

The Blotter Magazine

maryoliver.pdf

A FAMILY HISTORY

This Will Actually Happen

Writer and Performer

❝ Based on my great-grandmother’s diaries, these performances explored memory, family history, and personal genealogy. This project grew in ways I couldn’t have predicted – like the amazing chance to write a play with my Aunt Betsey Josselyn. ❞

Grad project at Queen Mary University of London

U.S. version

Photo by Betsey L. Josselyn

Mobius Art Gallery, Cambridge, MA

Part of the artist collective's Tinderbox series for new creators.

First Revision

Photo by Betsey L. Josselyn

John Curtis Library, Hanover, MA

Grant funded by the MA Cultural Council. Featured personal items and paintings by Greg's Aunt Betsey Josselyn.

Final piece

Photo by Kenny Roine

James Library, Norwell, MA

Expanded into a two-floor art installation with the performance as a duet with his Aunt.

A DOCU-DRAMA

The Play, or Northampton Revisited

Photo: Betsey Josselyn

❝ In college, I put on an original documentary play with my friend Ekiwah Adler-Beléndez as part of my senior thesis at Hampshire College. It was about his challenges as a young man in a wheelchair, navigating the wheelchair-accessible town of Northampton, MA in the U.S. READ MORE . . .

He takes a spin in a motorized wheelchair for the first time in his life after living for years in a small rural town in Mexico with inaccessible cobblestone streets. The play is about all the wonders and also the terrors that he experiences on that Northampton ride, navigating those streets.

While he was feeling the freedom of being alive and so free that he could go anywhere from sex shops to concert halls, to plays, to poetry readings, I was keeping track of the logistics. At any moment, he could crash into a car, or he might miss the bus stop where we wanted to go that day. We got into all kinds of mischief, like an older woman inviting us to a fancy restaurant and then speeding off in her wheelchair without paying! ❞

❝ IN RETROSPECT, The beauty of it was that we really got to dissolve the boundary between what is a play and what is life. I had to be very patient and empathetic with Ekiwah's process as he crossed those streets, and then helped in the process of translating his ideas to the stage. The play got a standing ovation on both nights. ❞

Retrospective

CLASS NOTES

The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl

Greg's Senior Directing Thesis at Hampshire College

❝ I challenged myself to take a step back, allowing the actors to shape their own interpretations. ❞

❝ Another college thesis project was directing Sarah Ruhl's The Clean House, a play that I connected with for its portrayal of New England's fixation on cleanliness and productivity—traits I recognized in myself and my own family. And I loved the playwright's inclusion of Brazilian and Argentine characters, as their contrasting cultural perspectives on cleaning added so much depth to the narrative. For this production, I embraced a highly collaborative approach. READ MORE . . .

I challenged myself to take a step back, allowing the actors to shape their own interpretations. My role evolved into that of a facilitator, posing thoughtful questions to guide the cast in uncovering their unique understanding of the characters. This method was particularly crucial given that our young college performers had to embody individuals in their fifties and sixties, requiring them to envision themselves decades into the future.The process encouraged our actors to cultivate empathy for their characters, bridging the gap between their current selves and the older personas they portrayed. This approach not only enhanced their performances but also fostered personal growth and insight. And the show was well received with lots of compliments from both faculty members and students, but it all boiled down to the art of being a good audience member for the cast. ❞

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