Peter Bisgaier remembers the first time he ever visited Bordentown City, picking up one of his children from an event.
Now a resident of Yardley, Pennsylvania, Bisgaier was living in West Windsor when he came to town for the first time.
“It was like I had arrived home,” he remembers. “I just absolutely fell in love with it the first time I drove down Farnsworth.”
In 2016, Bisgaier co-founded the Pegasus Theatre Company with Jennifer Nasta Zefutie and Judi Parrish. The fledgling troupe was the resident company of the West Windsor Arts Council. Today, Zefutie and Bisgaier run the company, with Parrish no longer involved.
For several years, Pegasus produced a couple of performances a year. Then, of course, the pandemic hit. The company produced no shows in 2020 or 2021.
But even before the pandemic, Bisgaier and Zefutie were looking for a new place to call home, and Bordentown turned out to offer the perfect opportunity. Pegasus has moved in to the Saint Mary School on Elizabeth Street, and will host camps and theater productions starting this year.
“We made the decision to leave West Windsor Arts Council before the pandemic hit, because we really had outgrown what we were able to do in that space. So we started to look for space that would better serve everything we wanted to do for the community,” Zefutie says.
Bisgaier says they also looked at spaces in Hamilton, Trenton and Cranbury. “Every time we’d come back to a space in Bordentown, both of us would just feel like we were home,” he says.
As is true for most theater companies, the Covid era was very difficult for Pegasus. “Our work was put on hold, a big pause for the last couple years,” Zefutie says. “It gave us an opportunity to think about where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. Once we found this space in Bordentown, we were able to get back to our mission of both performance and education in the community.”
Bisgaier says one big reason they wanted to leave the West Windsor Arts Council was so that they could provide theater classes and camps for kids, something that the WWAC also does.
“We weren’t able to produce our own classes and camps there,” he says. “So we wanted to find a place where we could do that for ourselves.”
Though Saint Mary School closed in 2013, St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church still uses the space for events and religion classes. Zefutie says they have worked out an arrangement that benefits both parties.
“Since their need to be in that space is fairly limited, they were looking for a way to use the space,” she says. “They had been renting it out for parties and that kind of thing. When we saw how perfectly it would work for us, we thought maybe we could plan out an agreement where we’ll give them the dates when we want to be able to hold productions or classes, and otherwise it’s the church’s space for whatever they need to do there.”
Pegasus has agreed to help the church stage some of its events with a performance element, such as the annual nativity show during the holidays. Pegasus also helped St. Mary’s stage their Passion for the Good Friday mass, and they will provide assistance for the church’s summer bible school.
“It’s like a partnership,” Zefutie says. “We’re helping each other fulfill needs that we have.”
Pegasus’ arrangement with the WWAC only allowed for two shows per season. Now, they plan to produce four productions per season — three intended for adult audiences, and one family-friendly show. The first show planned for the 2022-23 season is God of Carnage, a play written by Yasmine Reza and translated from French by Christopher Hampton.
“God of Carnage is a show that Jennifer and I both love and have wanted to do for years, so it was an easy choice for our first production,” Bisgaier says. “We think it will really show off what we can do. It’s a comedy, but it gets a little nasty — it’s fun and it’s human, it’s 90 minutes with no intermission so you get in and you get out. It’s really going to be four wonderful actors going at one another for 90 minutes.”
The second show planned for the upcoming season is Murray the Elf and the Case of the Missing Mistletoe, Dec. 2–23. Murray is billed as a family-friendly Christmas show about an elf detective at the North Pole who solves crimes for Mrs. Claus.
“It’s a series of shows that are all written by a friend of mine (Bill D’Agostino), and have been produced previously at other theater companies,” Bisgaier says. “One actor plays Murray, and the other actor plays everyone that Murray encounters. We wanted to do a family friendly Christmas show, but we didn’t want to do A Christmas Carol. This is great because even if you’re not a celebrator of Christmas you can still really enjoy it. We’re hoping it’s a success because we want to bring back Murray every year.”
Bisgaier is set to direct the first two productions, with Zefutie taking the reins for the third show, Marjorie Prime, which will take the stage Feb. 17 through March 5.
“Marjorie Prime is a family drama cloaked in a science-fiction world,” Zefutie says. “It really explores what makes us human and how much of humanity can technology replace.”
The fourth play is scheduled for a run next May 12 through 28, but the name has not yet been revealed. Bordentown residents Jonathan and Chrissy Martin are long-time members of the company, and Jonathan is slated to direct this show.
“We are contractually obligated not to announce the name of the play until June 1, but we can assure you that it is a very touching, moving dramatic piece that makes you laugh and cry,” Bisgaier says. “It’s just a beautiful piece that we’ve wanted to do for a really long time.”
An interesting aspect of Pegasus’ residence at Saint Mary School is that the performance space is in the school’s old gymnasium. “We’re basically creating a theater inside the gymnasium,” Bisgaier says. “We like to have a small stage, a small audience and that allows us to really engage with the audience. We will be building this space, so I think people will really surprised when they come in and see what we’ve built.”
In addition to the four stage productions, Pegasus also plans to host two camps this summer at the school. The first is a one-week Intro to Acting camp for kids ages 6 to 8, scheduled for Aug. 15 through 19. “We will do a lot of theater games, do all kinds of activities and exercises — a lot of playing and being silly but it really does introduce the kids to theater techniques and the concept of being on stage,” Bisgaier says.
The second camp is a two-week camp called Let’s Write a Play, scheduled for Aug. 22 through Sept. 2. In that camp, kids ages 9 through 14 will collaborate on every aspect of a theater production, from writing a play to casting it, rehearsing it and producing it on stage.
“I find that the kids, because they’ve created the show from day one, their level of ownership over the piece and their level of pride is amazing,” Bisgaier says. “It’s a great process because it’s an opportunity for kids to shine in all these different ways.”
Registration for the camps is open now. More information on the camps and the 2022-23 Pegasus season is online at pegasustheatrenj.org.
Bordentown resident Jonathan Martin (left) acting in “Proof,” a production of the Pegasus Theatre Company, in 2016. Pegasus has moved to Bordentown this year.,
