The New Peapack Players is a community theater troupe located in the Somerset Hills of New Jersey. Now in its second season, the troupe was founded in Gladstone by Director Allen Crossett and Producer Linda Lipkin in 2001.  Players make their homes in many of the surrounding towns in Somerset, Morris, and Hunterdon counties.

Dr. Crossett received his PhD in Drama from the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has been no stranger to amateur theatrics in the Somerset Hills. He retired in 1996 after 30 years teaching English at Ridge High School in Basking Ridge, where he served as the faculty advisor to the school’s theater and journalism programs, both recognized as the finest in the state.

A co-founder two decades ago of the Trilogy Repertory Company, a Basking Ridge troupe whose ambitious schedule and celebrated children’s touring shows are cultural fixtures in the Somerset Hills, Crossett has directed plays for the Chester Theatre Group’s Black River Playhouse, the Foothill Players in Middlesex, and other community groups. Author of an award-winning play of his own, for over thirty years Dr. Crossett has contributed drama criticism to the local newspapers of the Recorder Publishing Company.

In this last role, Dr. Crossett says that he has had ample opportunity to watch audiences around the state respond to good staging and popular repertory. “No question about it,” he said, “people living fifty miles from Times Square are a tough audience, but they’re perceptive in ways that reward diligent preparation and casting. What we try to do is provide those for them.”

An extensive interview with Dr. Crossett can be found here.