BROOKFIELD — When typical Americans Peter and Cindy Kirby invite college exchange student Rob into their home, they find he is the perfect guest — even though he has a lot to learn.

Their daughter Kate helps Rob navigate American society with the help of her boyfriend, Sam. But will Rob cross the line and outstay his welcome?

ROB is a play about technology, and society’s expectations and constrictions. It is about discovering one’s true self and learning how to express feelings in an unfamiliar society.

The comedy is the final play written by Ray Sipherd of Newtown, who was an early Sesame Street writer working on the show from 1969 to 1986.

His work on Sesame Street earned three Emmy Awards. He wrote song lyrics and authored several Sesame Street books. A graduate of Yale, Ray created the award-winning NPR program “All Things Considered” and published a number of novels and short stories.

He later served as a senior staff editor for Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

After retiring, he returned to his first love — writing for the stage. He wrote several plays, some of which received their first readings at Brookfield Theatre including The Rescue Station, Players, and Christmas At Macomber’s.

Director Lou Okell began working with Sipherd on ROB in 2019 but their plans to stage the show at Brookfield were cancelled due to the pandemic. Okell had previously collaborated with Sipherd on a number of his plays. She found his writing style, she said, to be crisp and insightful and his characters both honest and complex.

She is very excited, she said recently, to be able to finally bring Sipherd’s ROB to its first audience. She offered thanks to Sipherd’s widow, Anne Marie Foran, for all her help with the project.

A pair of staged readings is planned at Brookfield Theatre. Performances are scheduled for Friday, May 17, at 7 pm, and Saturday, May 18, at 2 pm. Both are free, with reservations requested and available through brookfieldtheatre.org/

ROB stars Tom Ovitt in the title role. Tom Heydenburg and Alicia Dempster play Peter and Cindy Kirby with Delaney Dempster as their daughter Kate and Andrew Peterson as Sam.

Rounding out the cast are Isabelle Bergman as social worker Mrs Vogel, Gary Blu as Agent Harrison from the federal immigration department, and Barbara Bock as the voice of Alexa.

The theater is at 184 Whisconier Road (Route 25) in Brookfield Center, adjacent to Brookfield Library.

The Playwright

Raymond “Ray” Duke Sipherd was born on August 27, 1935, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. His family moved to Valley Stream, New York, when he was 5 years old, and it was there early on that his creative spirit began to emerge. While still in grammar school, he formed a marionette troupe called The Surrey Common Players, entertaining and delighting the neighborhood.

From a young age, Sipherd took part in many school activities — he played the flute in the school band and excelled in his studies, winning several academic awards. He always knew that he wanted to be a writer, however.

Just before entering high school in 1949, Sipherd was struck with polio and spent three years in the hospital. He continued to pursue his studies and returned to the classroom for his senior year, ready and determined to have a full and rewarding life despite his physical challenges. He was elected class president and voted Most Likely To Succeed.

For his senior project, Sipherd and classmate Dick DeBenedictis — who went on to compose the themes for such TV successes as Perry Mason and Hawaii Five-O — wrote and produced an original musical called Holiday Hotel. The show was successful enough to earn a notice in The New York Times and raise substantial funds for polio research.

After graduation, Sipherd briefly attended Hofstra University before transferring to Yale University. It was there that his love of language and drama flourished. He wrote and directed a one-act play called The Emperor of Biloxi, which went on to be staged at The Westport Playhouse.

After graduating from Yale magna cum laude, Sipherd moved to New York City and worked as a writer/producer for WNDT Television, which would eventually become Channel Thirteen. As the sole writer on the team, he created the station’s first fundraising drive. He also produced a new show called “All Things Considered,” featuring, among others, old school friends — such as TV personality Dick Cavett and producer Tony Converse — to chat about trends in entertainment and the arts. Sipherd also wrote a series called “The City,” which showcased such New York landmarks as Lincoln Center, Times Square and the Meat Market.

In work presaging that of Ken Burns, Sipherd produced the award-winning documentary Years Without Harvest, movingly depicting the desolation of the Dust Bowl, with the photographs of Jacob Riis, Ben Shahn and Walker Evans, the voices of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Will Rogers and Huey Long, and the songs of Woodie Guthrie and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Sipherd left WNDT to become a story editor at CBS. Mandy, his Play of the Week, aired nationally to high acclaim. He also wrote scripts for the popular soap opera The Secret Storm.

Sipherd then teamed up with friend and colleague Joan Ganz Cooney to write a few scripts for a new little show for the Children’s Television Workshop called Sesame Street. Sipherd ended up staying with the production for 17 years, adding books and song lyrics to his Sesame Street repertoire, and won three Emmy Awards.

Writing for Sesame Street was really Sipherd’s “second job.” He was also managing a full-time career as a senior editor at The Reader’s Digest Association, where, among other things, his experience in broadcasting helped bring James A. Michener’s Centennial to television audiences on NBC. He also supervised a program about the Polish Revolutionary War hero Andrzej Kosciuszko, and an animated film about a dragon by Potterton Studios in Canada. He retired from Reader’s Digest after 25 years.

Even before and into “retirement,” Sipherd never stopped working on ideas that never seemed to stop coming to him. First came the golden years romance The Courtship of Peggy McCoy (1990), which was also selected by The Reader’s Digest book club. Then came the 12 interwoven tales of The Christmas Store (1993), which was twice optioned by Angela Lansbury. Then a mystery series featuring ornithologist-turned-detective Jonathan Wilder — Dance of the Scarecrows (1996), The Audubon Quartet (1998) and The Devil’s Hawk (2002).

With the help of director Kevin McGuire, Sipherd created a full-scale musical adaptation of Russian Expressionist Leonid Andreyev’s play He Who Gets Slapped. Sipherd wrote the book and collaborated with composer Arthur Rubinstein on the lyrics. The show enjoyed a successful run at The Theater Company at Hubbard Hall, in Cambridge, N.Y., in 2004.

His plays include the romantic comedy The Rescue Station (2014); Mathew Brady Presents (2013), an antiwar drama about the great Civil War photographer; Players (2019), about the goings-on backstage at a theater; a dramatic adaptation of three tales from his own The Christmas Store; and ROB, “an AI fable for our times.”

Ray Sipherd’s rich and remarkably productive life ended peacefully on April 23, 2020, with his beloved wife Anne Marie at his side. He was 83, and loved and admired by all who knew him.