Brian S. Brijbag’s Dark Comedy Premieres at Spark Theatre Festival

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Santiago Pinkney directs Diane Sykes and Chris Jaymes in a play about grief, corporate absurdity, and a mother's fight to remember her son.

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Two-time BroadwayWorld Tampa Award winner Brian S. Brijbag's dark comedy about a grieving mother, a cartoon frog and a cease-and-desist will play the 28th Street Theater on October 11.

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Amanda Bellamy did what a grieving mother might do. On her son's headstone she had the mason engrave Mr. Wobbleton, the top-hatted, permanently off-balance cartoon frog the boy loved more than anything. Then the company that owns the frog sent a lawyer.

A STRAIGHT LINE IS JUST A CIRCLE THAT GAVE UP, a new play by two-time BroadwayWorld Tampa Award winner Brian S. Brijbag, will make its world premiere on Sunday, October 11, 2026, at 2:00 PM at the 28th Street Theater (15 W. 28th St., 2nd Floor) as part of the Spark Theatre Festival NYC. Santiago Pinkney directs Diane Sykes as Amanda Bellamy and Chris Jaymes as Clive Mercer.

Clive is a "Senior Legacy Brand Protection Liaison" for MerryMirth Studios. He arrives at the cemetery in a suit, carrying a folder, a laser measurer and a formal notice to cease and desist the "unauthorized emotional extension" of a protected character. What starts as a farce of compliance turns into an unexpectedly tender reckoning between two parents. It is about grief, about corporate absurdity, and about all the small ways the world asks a crooked child to stand up straight.

The play turns on three lines from Amanda. Her motive: "I wanted him recognized before he was pitied." Her wound: "I'm sorry the last thing I asked of your body was for it to behave." And her final choice: "I know. I'm doing it anyway. That's the whole point of the frog."

Brijbag knows the law from the inside. By day he is a Florida trial attorney.

"I spend my working life in courtrooms watching the law try to put a price on loss," Brijbag said. "This play asks what happens when the law tries to own it. Amanda is fighting for the right to remember her son the way he actually was, crooked and funny and impossible, and the only weapon she has is refusing to straighten him out."

Brian S. Brijbag (Playwright) is a two-time BroadwayWorld Tampa Award winner and a playwright, director, anthropologist and Florida trial attorney based in the Tampa Bay area. His full-length play FUNERAL OF gOD premiered at AMT Theater in New York in summer 2026 as part of the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival. His other plays include FIREFLIES AND FAULT LINES, LOVE, LYSOL, AND OTHER DELUSIONS and ON THE LIKELIHOOD OF ELEPHANTS. He is the author of Negligence Assemble! and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. He produces new work in New York and Florida through his theatre company, Chaos and Craft.

Santiago Pinkney (Director) is a Floridian-turned-New Yorker studying Musical Theater and Psychology at Pace University. He is also the composer of THE FUNERAL CRASHER'S UNION, a new musical in development with Brijbag. He thanks the remarkable actors and the playwright who made this piece possible, along with his family, his friends and the One above.

Diane Sykes (Amanda Bellamy) is delighted to be stepping into Amanda's complicated shoes. Her favorite roles include Vivian Bearing in WIT (Generic Theater, Norfolk); Adult Bo in OFF THE MAP; KATHY AND MO: PARALLEL LIVES; Katherine in Henry Kissinger : A ROMANTIC COMEDY (NYC Fringe); and Dr. Nancy Lind in UNSOLVABLE RIDDLE. Her film credits include the festival winners Room Service and The End in Slow Motion, and she has played a variety of characters in the television series Ghost Stories, Forensic Files and New Detectives. Her career as a television news producer gave her a front-row seat to real-life human dramas, and she believes the most interesting women are rarely the ones who behave.

Chris Jaymes (Clive Mercer) appeared throughout 2026 as the lead in the Off-Broadway world premiere of CENSORSHIP OF DREAMS at La MaMa and the lead in the world premiere of PORTRAITS OF GAYS IN DESPAIR at the Playwrights Theatre, as well as in SIDESHOW BY THE SEASHORE at The Chain and THE FINAL STOP, which won Best Play at the Gene Frankel Theater. Other recent stage credits include ONE IN 25, portraying Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr. Richard Feynman ; Mel in the Irish two-hander THE SAVIOUR; and Roland in CONSTELLATIONS. Recent film and television credits include the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me from Nowhere; the recently released Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon Expedition with Michael Chernus ; a recurring role on Law & Order: Organized Crime; and Apple TV+'s For All Mankind, among many others. His debut feature as a writer-director, In Memory of My Father, starring Judy Greer , won more than a dozen international film festival awards.

Nominate your favorite local productions and performers before the deadline on October 31, 2026.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-off-broadway/article/A-STRAIGHT-LINE-IS-JUST-A-CIRCLE-THAT-GAVE-UP-to-Premiere-at-Spark-Theatre-Festival-20261005)._