WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — If there are playwrights whose work springs from a sense of contentment with the world, Marisa Smith is not one of them.

“The things that usually inspire me to write a play are usually things I get irritated about,” Smith said in a phone interview on Monday.

Smith pours a lot of her frustrations, particularly those regarding modern life and the expectations placed on women to be doting wives and mothers, into her new play “Samantha Inside Out,” which will appear before audiences for the first time in a reading at Shaker Bridge Theatre this Friday.

The reading brings a little star power to the Briggs Opera House, with TONY-nominated British-American actor Jayne Atkinson reading the part of the titular character Samantha, and Broadway playwright Theresa Rebeck.

Smith’s one-woman show opens to find Samantha smack in the middle of a midlife crisis. A mother of two grown children and the wife of a mean and narcissistic professor, she’s sick of being at everyone’s beck and call.

Her anguish breaks the surface at a Christmas party in the home of the college president when her husband insults her, causing her to lash out in front of the other guests. Humiliated, she flees to the bedroom of the president’s teenage daughter, Lydia, who’s been exiled to a Massachusetts boarding school after she was caught dabbling with drugs at the local high school.

Suddenly alone, Samantha begins to untangle the events that have led her to this point with us, the audience, as her quiet confidant a la Phoebe-Waller Bridge’s one-woman play “Fleabag.” “She tells us everything because we’re strangers,” Smith said of her protagonist.

Samantha also pokes around Lydia’s room, which reveals an assortment of teenage paraphernalia that adds a layer of humor and self-exploration to her emotional exorcism.

Smith has been tinkering with a version of “Samantha Inside Out” since the pandemic, when she wrote a short piece for the Boston Theater Marathon of 10-Minute Plays about a woman who’s fed up with the demands of modern life. Her character longs for “the ability to be alone with permission,” which technology has robbed us of, Smith said.

After reading the script for the 10-minute play, Rebeck, Smith’s longtime mentor, encouraged her to develop the story into a full-length piece.

Rebeck also suggested that Atkinson, who previously played Secretary of State Catherine Durant on Netflix’s “House of Cards,” read the part of Samantha.

“It had to be someone deeply, deeply gifted,” said Rebeck, who directed a reading of Smith’s play “Mad Love” at the University of Delaware. “We got our first pick, and that’s always a great feeling.”

In creating Samantha, Smith pulled from conversations with her women friends. The play’s academic setting, meanwhile, draws inspiration from her childhood; her father was a professor at Dartmouth.

“She’s singularly gifted to write about ... the hidden life of moneyed elites in an academic setting,” Rebeck said of Smith.

Theater has always had ties to childhood for Smith, who loved to act in plays when she was growing up. Writing is now a way for her to access the sense of play that acting had afforded her as a child.

“Children have great lessons to teach us as we get older,” she said. “And if you can tap into some of those things that kids do, you will discover great things, you will learn great things and you will be happier.”

Indeed, Smith, Rebeck and Atkinson have been engaged in their own kind of playful camaraderie as they’ve been rehearsing for Friday’s reading.

“I’m just so excited about going to rehearsal,” Smith said a few hours before she left for Rebeck’s house in Dorset, Vt.

“Theater is hard,” said Rebeck. “You better be having fun.”

The reading of “Samantha Inside Out” is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Friday, May 30 at the Briggs Opera House. For tickets ($10 for the general public; free for Shaker Bridge subscription holders) visit shakerbridgetheatre.org or call 802-281-6848.

Make movies; win prizes

Friday evening marks the start of the annual 48 Hour Film Slam at JAM (Junction Arts and Media) in White River Junction. As the name suggests, teams will have two days and any tools at their disposal to make a film based on a prompt that will be revealed at 5 p.m. on Friday. Last year’s prompt, for instance, required that films include the action of snapping, the use of a baby pin as a prop and the phrase “you know what they say…”

The completed films will be screened before a panel of judges, and the public, on Sunday and winners will be awarded cash prizes. But even if a team doesn’t win “At the end of the day, it’s cool that no matter what ... you made a film and you have that forever now,” said JAM’s production manager and producer Jordyn Fitch.

Registration for JAM’s 48 Hour Film Slam closes at 4:59 p.m. on Friday, May 30. To register ($20), visit uvjam.org. A public screening of the competing teams’ films will take place from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 1.

A concert about a musical

The New London Barn Playhouse will kick off its 93rd season this Friday with a concert version of “Annie Get Your Gun,” Irving Berlin’s spirited musical based on the life of American sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The show is a collaboration with the Nashua-based orchestra Symphony New Hampshire. Kennedy Caughell will play Annie Oakley opposite Fred Rose, as her love interest and competitor Frank Butler. The concert marks a return to the Playhouse stage for both actors. Caughell starred as Carole King in the theater’s 2023 production of “Beautiful,” while Rose appeared as King Arthur in “Camelot” a few years prior.

“Annie Get Your Gun — In Concert” opens at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 30 and runs through Sunday, June 1. For tickets ($65) and more information, visit nlbarn.org or call 603-526-6710.

Music in a field

Feast and Field, the annual concert series at Fable Farm in Barnard, returns this Thursday with a performance from Vermont rock group the Chad Hollister Band. This year, the festival has a new chef-in-residence, Sycamore Hess, who will be serving up dinner for patrons out of the kitchen in the farm’s Rumney Barn. Subsequent performances will take place every Thursday, rain or shine, through Sept. 25. For tickets ($5 – $25) and more information, visit feastandfield.com.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.