Tag Archives: Rachel Hall

Jan 25

First Time with Feeling: “The Great Pistachio”

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Production Art.

Presented by Yorick Ensemble
By Nicholas Cummings
Directed by Rachel Hall
Fight choreography by Sydney T Grant
Puppet consultant: Em Sheeran

January 23 – February 1, 2026 
Boston Center for the Arts
Plaza Black Box Theatre
539 Tremont St.
Boston, MA 02116
Online playbill

Critique by Kitty Drexel 

BOSTON — The Great Pistachio is an absurd gem of a play about nothing and everything that starts with the letter B: Brechtian, Beckett, burrow, beg, bunker, banjo, beige, brown, bureau of criminal apprehension, bruise, beets, Bertram, Boris, and Beatrice. To a lesser extent, it’s a play about things that start with the letters A and C: apocalypse and company policy. Yorick Ensemble brings this eccentric but thoughtful one-act play from the New York and Edinburgh Theatre Festivals to the Boston Center for the Arts for two weekends. If you survive Snowmageddon 2026, it’s worth carving a path to the South End to see it before it flits to another city.

Hold on to your butt, we’ve got a weird one. In a bunker at the end of the world, brothers Bertrand Brambles (John Brownlie) and Boris (Tim Lawton) are working on very important projects. Bertrand has written his magnum opus: a five-act, 272-page play free from worldly influence. Boris is determined to finally catch up on his newspaper reading; he won’t budge until he does. But! Boris might watch Bertrand’s play if Bertrand finds it a cast.  Continue reading →

Jul 29

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

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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 →