By Melissa Karen Sances
For the Valley Advocate
Actor Kimberly Gaughan remembers taking her first step onto the stage. Technically, it was her mother’s aerobic step — it was the early ‘90s, after all — and its neon-pink-and-teal-striped surface beckoned her to rise. She was only about a foot off the ground, but it was a matter of perspective: At 5 years old, she was as tall as the platform was long; it was her custom-sized world.
“I remember standing on it and just feeling like I was commanding the space. I don’t think I could be stopped,” said Gaughan, one of the founders of Heartbeat Theater, an Easthampton-based repertoire that opens its first show on Friday, Jan. 16.
After her mother took her to the Wang Theatre in Boston to see the “Phantom of the Opera,” Gaughan declared that she was going to play Christine Daae, the Phantom’s muse. She got her actual start in her South Shore hometown of Scituate as “Orphan No. 78” in “Annie,” where she played a nameless resident in the titular character’s orphanage.
But there was a singularity to her ascent into professional acting, she said, not unlike her original, fictional foray onto the stage where she was in a company of one.
“I thought I had to be the best and have a perfect performance,” admitted Gaughan, who went on to act with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival as well as the now-shuttered New Repertory Theatre in Boston. “I was so rigid. Once you let go a little bit, and let the breeze flow around you and respond to the other actors who are generously on stage with you, it’s much easier.”
Anne Zager, left, playing Claire, and Kim Gaughan, right, playing Catherine, perform during a rehearsal for Heartbeat Theater’s production of “Proof” at CitySpace in Easthampton. DANIEL JACOBI II / Staff Photo
Finding community
After moving to Holyoke with her husband Daniel Curtiss, Gaughan joined the Easthampton Theater Company’s production of “On Golden Pond” in January 2025, a play about intergenerational family dynamics where she portrayed the daughter of a stubborn patriarch.
Her chemistry with actor William Spademan, who played her father, sparked an idea: What if she and Spademan acted in another play centered on a father-daughter dynamic, David Auburn’s Pulitzer-winning ”Proof”?
That June, after the show had wrapped, Gaughan and Spademan — a resident of Ashfield and the former director of Ashfield Community Theater — had dinner with Jason Rose-Langston, who directed them in “On Golden Pond.” Rose-Langston, a longtime therapist in Easthampton, had wanted to direct “Proof” since the first time he saw it. The play is about a mathematician, Robert, a genius who revolutionized his field before he turned 23 and for the next three decades struggled to discern truth from reality. Not wanting him to spend the rest of his life in an institution, his daughter Catherine, herself a burgeoning mathematician in her mid-20s when the play opens, takes care of him until his death. Then she inherits his mind and has to grapple with what that means.
“As an advocate of mental health, I think that there’s something very powerful when the public gets to see it unfiltered and presented accurately,” Rose-Langston said. “That creates a level of truth about mental illness that we unfortunately don’t get exposed to enough.”
The play centers on a mathematical proof found in one of Robert’s notebooks, and incorporates two other characters’ perspectives as they all wrestle with whether he could have been the author.
One heartbeat
After Rose-Langston agreed to direct, the three tapped two actors they’d worked with before: Shelton Windham, who would portray Hal, Robert’s former graduate student, and Anne Zager, who would act as Claire, Catherine’s sister. Then they realized that to put on a production, they needed a production company. Another actor they had worked closely with, Trish Perlman, suggested they call their new endeavor “Heartbeat Theater.”
The name speaks to what Gaughan said is the “communal experience that you have on stage, this one heartbeat,” as well as the company’s mission to “present simple productions of great plays” that pulse with intimacy and urgency.
Curtiss, Gaughan’s husband and a lifelong musician, wrote an original score for the movie. “My aim was to mirror the mission of the theatre company itself,” he said, “to create simple and tender pieces that would help set the stage for the actors.”
Rose-Langston, who is on the board of the Easthampton Theater Company, said the troupe offered their wholehearted support to Heartbeat Theater, giving them access to props and furniture. The Williston Northampton School, where both Windham and Zager work, allowed the company to use its rehearsal space.
The show will be performed at the Blue Room at CitySpace in Easthampton, an 85-seat venue where Gaughan said audience members will be up close and personal.
“In a small house, you can see all the micro-thoughts going on in an actor’s brain, in the tilt of a head, and it becomes a really voyeuristic experience in a way, a communal experience,” Gaughan said. “There’s a human connection when you can see actors processing in real time. It’s tantalizing.”
Collective excellence
After so many local theatre closures over the past decade, including that of New Century Theatre in Northampton, the Victory Theatre in Holyoke, the Pioneer Arts Center of Easthampton (PACE), and the Black Cat Theater in South Hadley, Rose-Langston is over the moon that theatre is thriving again in the Valley.
“It’s once again the art mecca that it always was,” he said.
Gaughan said that she has fallen in love with the Valley, which has exceeded her wildest expectations. “I was shocked to learn that the romance I had created in my head — that the real thing was better,” she said.
Gaughan has also become part of a company that thrives together. She said it still takes constant practice for her to make room for others. But sharing the stage has been both a relief and a revelation.
“I don’t have to do it on my own,” she realized. And then: “We can make something really brilliant together.”
Proof runs from Jan. 16-25 at CitySpace. Tickets are $23 and can be purchased at heartbeattheater.org/tickets.
Melissa Karen Sances can be reached at melissaksances@gmail.com.
