Jul 29

Won’t Nobody Know What You Want Unless You Tell Them: “The Meeting Tree”

Beyoncé Martinez and Rachel Hall. Photo by Annielly Camargo.

Presented by Company One in collaboration with Front Porch Arts Collective
and the City of Boston Office of Arts and Culture
A new play by B. Elle Borders
Directed by Summer L. Williams
Dramaturgy by afrikah selah & Ilana M Brownstein
Music by Allyssa Jones

July 18 – August 9, 2025
The Strand Theatre 
543 Columbia Rd
Dorchester, MA 02125

Critique by Kitty Drexel

“Until we know who we are and where we’ve been, we cannot know where we’re going.” 
– B. Elle Borders in “Stories As Conduit: An Interview with The Meeting Tree Playwright B. Elle Borders” by afrikah selah.  

DORCHESTER, Mass. — Elle Borders’ The Meeting Tree is a collaboration between Company One and the Front Porch Arts Collective. These two companies have such similar missions of community building that this joint production is bound to succeed. The play runs through August 9 at Dorchester’s Strand Theatre. 

The Meeting Tree tells the story of Black lawyer Sofia Langton (Anjie Parker, is here to kick ass and take names. She’s all out of names.), who describes herself as pregnant, haunted, and feeling crazy enough to disrupt the peace of Alison Browning (Sarah Elizabeth Bedard), a white environmentalist currently occupying the Alabama farm where Sofia’s ancestors were once enslaved. Sofia is determined to find proof that the farm was left to her grandmother, Dixie Mae Montclair (Beyoncé Martinez), and to mend the wound that fractured her family tree before Sofia brings her unborn baby into the world.  Continue reading

Jul 23

The Whole Universe is in His Hands: “Kufre n’ Quay”

Levi Mngomezulu. Photo credit Annielly Camargo.

Presented by Boston Arts Academy with advisory support from The Huntington and in collaboration with Wheelock Family Theatre 
By Mfoniso Udofia
Directed by John Oluwole ADEkoje
Choreography by Shaumba- Yandje Dibinga

July 10 – 26, 2025
Boston Arts Academy Main Stage Theatre
174 Ipswich St. 
Boston, MA 02215

Critique by Kitty Drexel

An explanation: We use the word kid, child, kids or children to describe a young person under the age of 18. You might feel grown; you may even act grown, but you are not yet grown.

BOSTON — Kufre n’ Quay is the fifth play in Mfoniso Udofia’s cycle of nine plays, the Ufot Family Cycle. It follows the events of Udofia’s fourth play, Her Portmanteau, which is about the reunion of matriarch Abasiama Ufot with her two adult daughters: First-born Iniabasi Ekpeyong, born in the U.S. and raised in Nigeria, and Abasiama’s second daughter, Adiaha Ufot, raised in Massachusetts and living in New York City. Her Portmanteau meets the stark differences between Nigerian and American family politics. The NETG critique is HERE

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