Julia Weber
Staff Writer
Chautauqua Theater Company will continue its world-premiere run of The Witnesses at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday in Bratton Theater.
The play, written by playwright C.A. Johnson, was commissioned by CTC Producing Artistic Director Jade King Carroll in 2023 and was brought to the Institution as a New Play Workshop titled Tell Me You’re Dying in 2024. This season, the play returns once more, this time as a full production.
Set during an apocalyptic plague, The Witnesses follows a group of individuals comprising a support group as the world falls apart around them. Nicholas Byers is in his second season with CTC and plays the role of Caleb, a young man navigating adulthood and its many complexities in the midst of the plague ravaging the world around him.
“This play has opened me up to something that I’ve been really excited about artistically for a long time, and that’s diving deeper into very complicated men — but extremely vulnerable,” he said.
Byers was a member of the CTC acting conservatory in 2024 and had the opportunity to play the character of Caleb during the New Play Workshop process, when The Witnesses was still Tell Me You’re Dying. Because of this, he said he has had an opportunity to delve into the role and explore the depths of the character, channeling “vulnerability,” “compassion” and “grit” during his
artistic process.
“The play is your canvas, but you get to paint and it’s completely original,” he said. “What I’ve been excited about is, over time, finding new colors to not only him, but him in relationship to other people.”
When he was first introduced to the role during the NPW, Byers said he initially had a sense of Caleb; he found connections to the character not only in himself, but in those around him — uncles, cousins, brothers or his father, all who influenced his navigation of the character as he sought out his personality through the workshop.
Byers said a big part of his exploration of the role was understanding how his character relates to others in the play. Through his interpersonal relationships, Byers was able to identify Caleb’s personality traits and motivations, which he said was “really fun and really challenging.”
Before joining the CTC conservatory in 2024, Byers — who earned his Master of Fine Arts in the Brown/Trinity Rep Class of 2025 — hadn’t heard of Chautauqua, but has since found it to have a profound impact on his artistic process.
“I had never heard of a place like this, where you can focus on your craft and just enjoy nature. That’s been the biggest contributor to my artistic fulfillment here,” he said. “Coming back, I’m very intentional on work and play. Being able to be by the lake and being outside are things that I truly, deeply enjoy. That’s one of the main reasons I was really excited to come back.”
Byers said that while audiences often engage in art — whether it be films, music, plays or otherwise — as a form of respite or escapism, he hopes Chautauquans will be prepared to engage with and embrace ambiguity when they see The Witnesses.
“People should come curious and open. Beginning and endings are both equally beautiful,” he said. “I would really encourage people to key into the hope and love, because there’s a lot of that in this play.”
