Cheese Platter Productions is a small, grassroots theatre company born out of friendship, community theatre, and one slightly crazy idea.
In February 2024, five actresses came together at Nutley Little Theatre in New Jersey to perform in the comedy 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche by Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood. What started as a typical community theatre production quickly turned into something special. The cast clicked immediately, both onstage and off, and the experience became one of those rare shows that everyone would have gladly continued performing endlessly
The production went on to win the 2024 Perry Award for Best Play, one of the top honors in New Jersey community theatre, with cast member Danielle Levitt also receiving a Best Actress nomination. But the most meaningful thing to come out of the show wasn’t the awards, it was the bond the cast formed while making it.
After the run ended, the group stayed close and kept talking about how much the show meant to them. Eventually someone said the thing that felt a little bit ridiculous at the time:
What if we took this show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival?
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the largest performing arts festival in the world, featuring thousands of productions from across the globe every summer in Scotland. None of us had ever produced something on that scale before, and none of us had ever taken a show overseas.
But the idea wouldn’t go away.
So we decided to take the leap and formed Cheese Platter Productions, an independent company created specifically to bring our award-winning production to the Fringe.
Four members of the original Nutley cast, Sinead Kerr, Kayla Torres, Danielle Levitt, and Jessa Blackthorne, will reprise their roles, joined by Mia Jacobs. The Fringe production will be directed by Jessa Blackthorne, with Kayla Torres serving as Assistant Director, as the team reimagines the show for an international audience.
Our company is deeply rooted in the New Jersey community theatre world that helped all of us grow as performers. We come from rehearsal rooms filled with volunteers, late-night set builds, borrowed props, and audiences who believe in the magic of live theatre. Those spaces are where we learned our craft, and where we learned how powerful a shared creative experience can be.
Cheese Platter Productions exists because of that spirit.
We’re proud to bring a homegrown New Jersey production to audiences around the world, and even prouder to represent the creativity, passion, and heart of community theatre on an international stage.
We hope you’ll take this journey with us.