Who invented the telephone?
Spoiler alert! It wasn’t Alexander Graham Bell.
Amber McNew plays the man who should have gotten credit but filed his patent after Bell.
“So many people don't even know my name,” said McNew, slipping into character. “Don't even know the name Elisha Gray. Did not know there was a rival to Alexander. We really do only know what is printed in the history books quite often.”
That was true of playwright Jenny Stafford. She made the discovery as she was researching a different – and rather unsavory – aspect of Bell’s life.
“I started taking sign language classes in 2019, and in the sign language classes, I learned that Alexander Graham Bell is a huge villain,” said Stafford. “He spent a lot of his life trying to eradicate sign language. He ran a lot of schools for deaf children where he would strap them to chairs and he wouldn't let them use their hands and he tried to make them mimic sounds.”
She heard another fact in a documentary about Bell that startled her.
“It was the first time that I'd heard that on the same day he filed the patent for the telephone, another guy filed the patent three hours later,” Stafford recounted. “And the documentary just moved on and I was like, wait, what? I was like, who was that guy? What was he doing for three hours that he missed inventing the telephone? And so, I started doing some research, and then this play grew out of that research.”
So who in the world is Elisha Gray?
McNew brings that inventor to life in the play.
“Elisha Gray, I think, has fantastic ambition, pure intention, but a drive that unfortunately some people, if they are in the way, can feel some of the speed and the wake of a fast-moving machine, you know,” said McNew. “So yeah, just a very driven individual who is going to get what they want at, unfortunately, sometimes all costs, but his heart is in the right place.”
But “Ahoy-Hoy” is a comedy, surprising even playwright Stafford.
“Every new fact that I found just made the play funnier and funnier and funnier,” said Stafford. “And then I had all this research on Alexander Graham Bell, and if you use it through the lens of someone who hates him, that all becomes really funny too, right? So, it really pops to life, and I sort of couldn't believe that no one had ever told this story in any kind of comedic format, because it just really lends itself to it.”
Fort Myers actor, author and director Gerrie Benzing witnessed the humor up close. She read the stage directions and appeared in the role of Siri during the staged reading of the play during the Florida Repertory Theatre’s PlayLab Festival in May.
“So much laughter,” Benzing commented. “I got a lot of my laughing out in rehearsal, but you’re still tempted to laugh while you’re onstage because it is so funny. You learn a lot of history in a really funny way. It is just an evening full of jam-packed fun.”
Benzing recalled that she found the script to be “wild, crazy and so much fun” when she first read it.
Celine Rosenthal directed that staged reading at Florida Repertory Theatre, along with another during last year’s Modern Works Festival at Urbanite Theatre, which won the Audience Choice Award. Now she’s directing the full production.
“Comedy is a beautifully delicate science, and I try as much as I can to create an environment that has a lot of play in it so that we can find the things that make it funny,” she said.
Some of the play’s comedy comes from Gray’s longsuffering assistant, Cornelius, who keeps coming up with inventions that Gray dismisses as impractical.
“Disposable rubber gloves I came up with, and I also had this idea for something called a light bulb,” said Ben Williamson, who portrays Cornelius. “I don't know if it ever came to be anything, but I did have this idea to have light inside.”
The play does have a serious theme.
“This is an opportunity to … laugh at our human foibles and really think about the big question at the center of the piece, which is what is it to have a legacy, and what do we leave behind, and what really matters?,” noted Rosenthal. “Is it the thing that we'll leave behind or is it embracing the day that we are in and the moment that we are in and living our lives to the fullest within what we can control?”
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Synopsis
It’s 1876 (and also right now). Elisha Gray (Amber McNew) is this close to inventing the telephone. He’s brilliant, anxious, and ready to make history… if Alexander Graham Bell (Casey Murphy) doesn’t beat him to it.
“Ahoy-Hoy” is a deliriously unhinged, unapologetic sprint through American ambition, innovation, and the absurd quest for legacy. History has never been this ridiculous or this fun.
This story is, however, about more than just technology. It delves into themes of ego, American ambition, and the quest for legacy — who gets credit for an idea, who gets remembered, and what are some people willing to do to secure their place in history?
Elisha’s assistant, Cornelius (Ben Williamson), tries desperately to help his mentor — even if that means some breaking and entering.
Each inventor works feverishly to complete their patent applications and race over to Wilbur (Ariel Blue), the “finish line” at the patent office.
If you’ve never heard of Elisha Gray, you can probably guess who got there first.
The play’s title
Alexander Graham Bell employed “ahoy” as the greeting people would use when they answered the telephone. The greeting, derived from the Dutch word “hoi” meaning hello, had been in the common lexicon for at least 100 years, although it was a coinage properly used to greet or get the attention of small sloop-rigged coasting ship.
Bell felt so strongly about "ahoy" he used it for the rest of his life. As does Monty Burns, the evil owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on “The Simpsons,” who regularly answers his phone "Ahoy-hoy."
But Thomas Edison urged people to say “hello” when greeting each other on the phone. And so did early phone books, which included authoritative “how to” sections on their first pages, where "hello" was frequently the officially sanctioned greeting. In fact, the first phone book published, by the District Telephone Company of New Haven, Connecticut, in 1878 (with 50 subscribers listed) told users to begin their conversations with "a firm and cheery 'hulloa'" (the extra "a" being silent.)
Those early phone books also recommended that people should end their phone calls with “That is all” rather than “good-bye” or “bye-bye,” which is a contraction of the phrase “God be with ye.” Source: “The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everybody Uses But No One Reads,” by Ammon Shea (Perigee/Penguin 2010).
Backstory
By the middle of the 1870s, telegraphy was at its peak. Telegram traffic increased so quickly during that decade that it became difficult in many areas to handle the increased volume. Although new lines were being constructed at a rapid pace, the lines could only accommodate one transmission at a time. So, Western Union offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could develop a system for the simultaneous transmission of several communications along a single wire, called multiplex telegraphy.
Both Bell and Gray took up the challenge. They pursued an identical approach, namely sending different sounds through telegraph wires.
By then, Gray had several inventions to his credit, including the electronic music synthesizer and fax machine. He also had history with Western Union, having patented a self-adjusting telegraph relay and supplying telegraph equipment to Western Union. So, he focused his efforts on creating a workable multiplex telegraphy system, which he did, winning the $1 million prize.
Because Bell was a trained speech therapist who taught deaf students at the University of Boston, he concentrated instead on developing a “talking” telegraph. Some historians claim that advantage enabled Bell to “invent” and patent the telephone ahead of Gray. Others contend that there is evidence that Bell’s lawyers copied Gray’s drawings from his previously filed caveat (which is an intention to file a patent application) and included them in Bell’s official application.
“The piece [in Gray’s drawings] was the missing link, and there's a lot of evidence that Alexander Graham Bell stole it from him,” said Stafford. “So, I have to give it to Gray [as the true inventor of the telephone].”
Although Bell received the credit and patent for the telephone, Gray was awarded more than 70 patents during his lifetime, and his design is now credited as the first successful telephone prototype.
Ironically, Bell subsequently offered to sell his telephone patent to Western Union, but the president of the telegraph giant was so committed to traditional telegraphy that he rejected the offer, telling Bell, “We are not interested in a scientific toy.”
So, Bell formed his own company, Bell Telephone Company, which was soon engaged in a tough legal battle about patent rights with Western Union, which had purchased Gray’s patent. The Bell Company emerged victorious and had a monopoly in regard to the telephone in the United States through the middle of the 1890s.
Gray also had a company, which he founded with Enos M. Barton prior to embarking on his telephone research. That is now called Graybar and is on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations.
Production history
“So this play started here at our [2025] Modern Works Festival,” Summer Dawn Wallace recounted. “It had been part of a few other reading festivals before it came to Modern Works, and it also was part of PlayLab at Florida Rep this last season.”
The play received a staged reading on May 3, 2026, in the historic Arcade Theatre as part of Florida Repertory Theatre’s annual PlayLab festival. Celine Rosenthal directed Veronica Duerr (Alexander Graham Bell), Oriana Lada (Elisha Gray), Cody Klimek (Cornelius) and Gabe Hunyor (Wilbur), with stage directions provided by Gerrie Benzing.
“It was presented on their main stage, which is four times the size, maybe five times the size of our space here at Urbanite,” Wallace noted. “So, to see the play work so well in very different venues - we do very different work from each other – and for the play to resonate so well with both audience sensibilities and different spaces, to me, it's like a testament to how good the play is.”
Winner of the 2025 Urbanite Theatre Modern Works Festival “Audience Favorite” award, “Ahoy-Hoy” has received further development through Lemonade Stand Theatre, SOMA Stage, Prologue Theatre, Florida Rep’s 2026 PlayLab, and Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2026 New Play Workshop.
“The play’s journey from a Modern Works Festival reading to a fully realized rolling world premiere is exactly the kind of new-play development the Modern Works Festival was created to support,” Wallace added.
“It feels really special and really right that the first actual production of it is going to be in Urbanite in this exact same room where it was first heard last year on the 150th anniversary of Bell and Gray filing their patent applications,” said Stafford. “That feels really special and like a really great full circle moment for it.”
Following its run at Urbanite Theatre, “Ahoy-Hoy” will continue its rolling world premiere with productions at Alleyway Theatre, New Jersey Repertory Theatre, and Theatre Nova.
Creative team
Playwright – Jenny Stafford
Director – Celine Rosenthal
Production Stage Manager: Drew O'Phaelan*
Assistant Stage Manager: Evan Lemole
Scenic Designer: Jeff Weber
Lighting Designer: Michael Pasquini
Props & Set Dressing Designer: Drew O’Phaelan*
Sound Designer & Technical Supervisor: Rew Tippin
Costume Designer: David Covach
Wig Designer: Jonathan Hall
Voice & Dialects: Patricia Delorey
Master Carpenter: Eugene Alcorn
Scenic Charge: Paige Spizzo
Artistic Director: Summer Wallace
Cast
Elisha Gray – Amber McNew
Alexander Graham Bell – Casey Murphy
Wilbur the Patent Officer – Ariel Blue
Cornelius, Gray’s Faithful Assistant – Ben Williamson
The theater
For “Ahoy-Hoy,” Urbanite has configured its black box theater as a traverse stage – a long, narrow performance strip resembling a runway or alley with the audience seated on opposite sides.
“Urbanite is so intimate,” observed Williamson. “It’s a wonderful opportunity as an actor to play in a space like this. The configuration and set really allows us to play to the audience. It feels at times kind of like a tennis match - you hit, I hit, it's back and forth.”
“The way Urbanite transforms this space is always a pleasant surprise for the audience,” Rosenthal chipped in. “You never know what you'll see when you walk in the door. And there's something that's particularly immediate about being mere feet away from a performer when they're telling you a story. It's really special.”
It can also be jarring since we now consume so much of our media on our phones.
“We consume a lot of our media on screens,” Rosenthal noted. “So, there’s a separation between us and the storyteller. While that can feel very safe and comforting, of course, there's nothing like being in a room with people and being able to breathe the same air and feel that heartbeat in a space. Urbanite allows that in a wonderful way.”
Performance schedule
Sundays & Wednesdays at 2 p.m.; and
Wednesday–Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Special dates
Saturday, October 31 at 2 p.m.
Tuesday, November 24 at 7:30 p.m.
No performances on November 26-27 for Thanksgiving holiday.
Saturday, November 28 at 2 p.m.
More about playwright Jenny Stafford
A 2025 Modern Works Festival finalist, Jenny Stafford is an award-winning playwright, author and lyricist. Her works have been heard on Broadway and beyond, including Lincoln Center, Cirque du Soleil, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Joe’s Pub, Arts Nova, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Dancing with the Stars, and other regional and international venues.
Stafford works across all genres, having produced dramas, comedies and musicals as well. But comedy is a recurring throughline.
“Most things that I write have some thread of comedy through it, because I think that's sort of how we connect as human beings,” Stafford said. “If you can make somebody laugh, you can sort of take them anywhere.”
She relishes the opportunity to get inside her character’s heads, to live a completely different life through storytelling, to research a specific time period. “To find out what was happening for people in that time and give us some context to look at that through a lens of right now,” she said.
She’s careful to distinguish her play, “Ahoy-Hoy,” from the type of historical fiction that John Grisham, David Baldacci and Kate Quinn write.
“So much of the story is true,” Stafford observed. “There's very little actually that I made up in this story, and so, you're coming and you're finding a lot of actual true facts about the invention of the telephone, but definitely through the lens of comedy, through the lens of joy, through the lens of sort of madcap hijinks."
While Stafford derives great satisfaction from hearing audiences laugh during her plays, she also thrills at the opportunity to provide audiences with a lens through which to examine their lives and life choices, which lies thematically at the heart of “Ahoy-Hoy.”
“The play works on two levels,” Stafford explained. “On the one hand, you're here, you're laughing, you're having a really great time, but it's also getting you to re-examine your life through and how much time we spend focusing on the future and how much time we spend on what's right now in front of us, which is the only thing that we can control and the only thing that we ever are guaranteed. So, I hope audiences have a really, really great time and walk out feeling lighter and more joyful and more appreciative of this moment.”
That aspect of the play surprised Stafford.
“A lot of times as playwrights, you are working on stories that are sort of trying to answer the unanswerable questions that you have about life that keep you up at night,” Stafford remarked.
“When I started this one, I was like, oh, this one's just a comedy. I'm not trying to do anything with this one," Stafford continued. "This one's just fun. And the thing that I really discovered in the writing of it was like, oh, man, the Venn diagram between what artists want and what inventors want has a lot of crossovers. There's a lot of similar striving for creating something new and adding to the lineage of people who came before you. Am I going to leave anything behind? Are there any kids going to grow up loving my plays like I grew up loving other people's plays? And that really surprised me in the writing of this. I was like, oh, I thought I was just writing a completely ridiculous comedy. But actually, within this character of Elisha Gray is buried all of my deepest hopes and fears and insecurities about being an artist. And the piece took on another layer about being about legacy that I didn't expect when I started it. So, I'm proud of that. I'm proud of where it landed and that we can laugh and have a really great time, but also contemplate some of the larger questions about life.”
Stafford has received numerous awards over the course of her career, including the Reva Shiner Comedy Award, the Paulette Goddard Award, and the Capital Repertory New Works Award.
She is a three-time finalist for the Kleban Prize for Musical Theatre and a finalist for the McKnight Fellowship, the PEN Writing for Justice Fellowship, the Yale Institute for Music Theatre, and the Eugene O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference and Playwriting Conference. She was also a nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Artist in Residence at the Rhinebeck Writer’s Retreat, Goodspeed Musicals, and Johnny Mercer Writers Colony.
A Dramatists Guild member, Stafford received her MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
More about director Celine Rosenthal
Rosenthal is a Tony-nominated producer, “Key” in The Ring Of Keys and New Georges Affiliate Artist. At Urbanite they had the pleasure of directing “Jennifer, Who Is Leaving.” Their Asolo Repertory Theatre directing credits include “Dial M for Murder,” “Grand Horizons,” “The Incident at Our Lady ….,” “The Lifespan of a Fact” and “Camelot.”
Rosenthal’s recent projects include “Dial M for Murder” (Pittsburgh Public Theatre), “Queen of Wands” (Union Theatre, London), “When We Were Young and Unafraid,” “Angel Street,” “In the Next Room” (Studio Theatre); “Trayf” (New Rep); “Drowning in Cairo” (N.Q.T); the award-winning short film “Wildflower” and upcoming films “Getting Off” and “Musings,” and workshops of “Oneida” by Beth Blatt (Seven Dials, London), “Adventure of Life” by Veronika Duerr (Warehouse Theatre, SC & Chisenhale Dance, London), “Dalloway” by Lindsay Joelle (PlayLab, Florida Rep), and “My Favorite Sociopath” by Aurin Squire (SCNPF & New Dramatists).
When she first read the script for “Ahoy-Hoy,” Rosenthal wondered aloud, in between the laughs, how much of the story was fiction and how much was true.
“It was one of the first things that I think I asked when I had my first conversation with Jenny,” Rosenthal recalled. “And it turns out almost all of it is true.”
Although Rosenthal marvels at Stafford’s creativity, she too has played a role in the play’s development. That’s because they directed the staged reading during Urbanite’s Modern Works Festival and the one during Florida Repertory Theatre’s PlayLab Festival.
“Staged readings in a lot of ways feel like triage for a director because there are so many things that are happening and it's a very, very short timeline,” Rosenthal explained. “You kind of have to come in and make big choices and be very prepared and be ready to shift because you want to allow the writer an opportunity to hear the piece aloud, sometimes for the very first time, that it comes from their brain to the page and then to the world.”
Hearing how the dialogue flows from the actors’ lips to the audience’s ears helps the playwright identify areas where the play can be improved.
“And when they make changes, you have to shift around it to see how you can negotiate it and allow for conversation and discovery.”
It’s tricky at times because staged reading take place absent set, props and costumes.
“So much of what happens takes place in the imagination since the actors are just sitting at music stands.”
In addition to set, props, costumes and lighting and sound cues, taking a play from a staged reading to its world premiere provides another benefit – extended rehearsal time.
“We get to run things over and over and over to figure out exactly how they might fit in the world,” Rosenthal continued. “We get to physicalize them. We get to have a set. We get to think about the costumes. We get to think about the props, which, in this show, we have some really delightful props that we get to figure out the mechanics of. It just gives you more dimensions of the world to explore.”
Having participated in the play’s evolution, Rosenthal is convinced that audiences will commiserate with the play’s protagonist, Elisha Gray.
“Anybody who's ever strived for something has experienced coming up against obstacles and being frustrated and having to dig into your reserves of bravery to keep going,” said Rosenthal. “When you say who invented the telephone, most people immediately answer Alexander Graham Bell. So, it's nice to see history revealed in this way. It's nice to see our expectations get flipped on their head.”
More about actor Amber McNew
Elisha Gray is portrayed by Amber McNew. The Brooklyn-based actor, choreographer, and drag king’s recent credits include: “Hamlet,” Lake Lucille Project; “Bloom Bloom Pow,” New Georges; “Henry VIII” (choreographer), Columbia Stages; “1999,” Modern Works Festival at Urbanite Theatre; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Double Feature; “Scorch,” Urbanite Theatre; “Reckless,” Asolo Rep.
“I am someone who caught the theater bug a little later and started around high school,” said McNew. “I'm from the deep south, in Louisiana, so we didn't have like anything like that. I didn't know that drama was a thing until my mama moved us to Utah in high school and they had drama classes and I was immediately just obsessed with anything old school, MGM, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers. Grew up on that. The minute I knew you could do it, I was in.”
McNew performed in Urbanite’s 2025 Modern Works Festival, but she was in “1999,” so she admired “Ahoy-Hoy” from afar. She was delighted when Urbanite Artistic Director Summer Dawn Wallace invited her to audition for the role and even more delighted to find out that she was being considered for the role of Elisha Gray.
“I was kind of delightfully taken off guard to discover I would be playing a male but just went in and gave my best and ended up getting to play the part, which was a surprise and has been an ultimate delight, yeah,” she elaborated. “It is rare as a female-presenting actor to step into this kind of power and ego under the male lens.”
While it may have been no laughing matter to Gray for Bell to best him in the rush to patent the telephone, the play elicited guffaws and belly laughs in its staged readings at Urbanite and Florida Repertory Theatre. That presents a challenge when delivering the play’s laugh-inducing lines.
“I am the ultimate hypervigilant, three-minded machine while I'm up here [onstage],” said McNew. “I’m paying attention to what is coming next, what I have rehearsed, the structure that we have built and honoring that, my scene partner, the audience around me, the props potentially happening or not happening. It is truly, and especially with something like this, where you're so lucky to have so many working parts, you are also going to get to work that many tiny muscles to make sure it stays up. You kind of have to be a juggler, a multitasker of an intense sort, but I thrive on that.”
Besides being funny, McNew anticipates audiences being swept up in the play’s historical underpinnings and the playwright’s word-perfect prose. But she also finds irony in the play’s overall theme.
“Isn't it funny that we're doing a show about the telephone, which now has us more disconnected than ever, that could really connect people by laughing in this space telling this story?” she asked. “The audience will not only get a history lesson, they’ll walk away having connected, walk away having belly laughed, walk away with some intense POV of like legacy, connection, the telephone, even their relationship to it. I think we ask many questions, but give the audience such a digestible vehicle to do it in. Humor and the safety of a dark theater allows you to go places and teach lessons faster than so many places.”
Asked to sum up the reason audiences love the experience of “Ahoy-Hoy,” McNew offered this observation: “It’s like the best inside joke.”
McNew received an MFA from FSU Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training. For more, visit www.ambermcnew.com.
More about Ben Williamson
Ben Williamson plays the part of Elisha Gray’s assistant and comic foil, Cornelius.
Williamson describes his character as a fanboy, ambitious and a little insecure. “He looks up to Elisha,” Williamson amplified. “Elisha is the icon, the one true inventor. He was a celebrity in a way, and to be given the opportunity to work for someone like him was a gift Cornelius cherished every day.”
When asked if Cornelius is to Elisha what Watson was to Holmes, Williamson demurred.
“As Igor is to Frankenstein,” he quipped.
Williamson has appeared regionally at Urbanite Theatre (“Isaac’s Eye,” “Women Laughing Alone with Salad”), Manhattan Theatre Club, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Capital Repertory Theatre, Asolo Repertory Theatre, American Stage, Arts Center of Coastal Carolina, Shadowland Stages, Cider Mill Playhouse, Madison Theatre, Know Theatre, Denizen Theatre, and the National Academy for Chinese Theatre Arts in Beijing, China.
“I just love storytelling,” Williamson said. “Being able to play and to imagine and to create is everything, and to bring the people together is huge.”
Williamson
Williamson’s TV and film credits include “Vinyl” (HBO, for director Martin Scorsese), “Royal Pains” (USA), “The Mysteries of Laura” (NBC), “The Perfect Murder” (ID), “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” (feature), “Peter the Great” (feature), and “Barry Baker” (Amazon Prime). He has also done national commercials for Benjamin Moore, Doritos, Corona and Adams Fairacre Farms.
He serves as managing director of Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, New York, and teaches directing and performing in media at SUNY New Paltz.
Williamson earned his bachelor of arts with honors from Binghamton University, and his MFA from FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training.
More about Casey Murphy
Casey Murphy returns to Urbanite Theatre after previously appearing in “Spaceman” and “The Feast,” as well as four different Modern Works Festivals (“Ahoy-Hoy,” “A Nice Motherly Person,” “Therapy” and “Testing Gold”).
Currently based in Sarasota, Murphy has also worked regionally and in New York, where he spent 15 years.
His local credits include Asolo Repertory Theatre (“Lady Disdain” world premiere), Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe (“A Soldier’s Play”), Florida Studio Theatre, and the Hermitage.
Other theatres include Prague Shakespeare Company, Magic Theatre, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Colorado New Play Festival, Marin Shakespeare Company, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Bigfork Summer Playhouse, Cohoes Music Hall, and the Michigan Shakespeare Festival. Murphy is a graduate of the University of Michigan. Website: CaseyMMurphy.com; IG: @case.murphy.
More about Ariel Blue
Ariel Blue is an actor, writer, and recording artist who feels most at home under stage lights and behind a microphone.
She's happy to be back at Urbanite Theatre. Blue has performed internationally with Connelli Circus in Switzerland and is a familiar face at Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe.
Her stage credits include “Fences,” “The Apiary,” “Flyin’ West,” “A Night With Janis Joplin,” “Sistas in the Name of Soul,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Dreamgirls,” “Avenue Q,” “The Wiz,” “A Motown Christmas,” and “The Amen Corner.” Blue has produced three one-woman cabarets and has played with FST Improv. She was featured in “The Know Women Magazine” (2022) and received the Tampa Bay Women in Film & Theatre Award (2023).
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
