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

Jan 24

Playing with Fate in “Intimate Exchanges”

Sarah Elizabeth Bedard and Jade Ziane. Photo: A.R. Sinclair Photography

Presented by The Nora Theatre Company
Written by Alan Ayckbourn
Directed by Olivia D’Ambrosio

January 12-February 12, 2017
Central Square Theatre
450 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Central Square Theatre on Facebook

Review by Travis Manni

(Cambridge, MA) There truly is nothing like the unique experience of theatre. And in Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges, the audience is presented with a choose-your-own-adventure in which no performance is ever identical to the one before. Continue reading

Sep 20

Jordan Needs a Xanax and a Snuggle: “Significant Other”

vanessa-shower-with-nsfw-props

Photo Credit: Justin Saglio; Penises at the Hen Party. Penis. Penis. Penis.

Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company
By Joshua Harmon
Directed by Paul Daigneault

Sept. 9 – Oct. 8, 2016
Calderwood Pavilion
Boston Center for the Arts
Boston, MA
SpeakEasy on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MASignificant Other (SO) is Sondheim’s Company is the music were stripped, and Bobby was made both gay and genuinely likable. The percentage of justifiable choreography remains equal between the two shows. The set design is similarly simple. The scene transitions are more facile. All in all, based entirely on sympathetic characters alone, Significant Other is the more pleasant viewing choice. Whether this is true for you depends upon your own theatrical preferences. Continue reading

Jun 09

Who Doesn’t Like Penis Stuff? : THREE

Adulthood blows. Enjoy your youth now. Photo Credit: Ron Spalletta

Adulthood blows. Enjoy your youth now. Photo Credit: Ron Spalletta

Presented by Boston Public Works Theatre Company
By Emily Kaye Lazzaro
Directed by A. Nora Long

June 5 – 20, 2015
Boston Center for the Arts
Plaza Black Box
Boston, MA
BPW on Facebook

Review by Kitty Drexel

(Boston, MA) Hollywood characterizes women like they’re mysterious flowers incapable of raunch or, conversely, like unsexy raunch-machines that repel penises. Theatre is kinder to us by generally allowing us our humanity, albeit a fragile one that must be guarded… unless characterizing us as a Strong Female Character who is impervious to nurturing. The unjust stereotypes abound. Why can’t we be complicated people who attempted to appropriately abide the status quo while farting into a void? This is who we are. You know, just like dudes.    Continue reading

Aug 04

“Translations” and Tribulations

Credit: Paul Cantillon, Lidecphoto.com

Presented by Bad Habit Productions
by Brian Friel
directed by M. Bevin O’Gara

August 2-17, 2014
Boston Center for the Arts
Calderwood Pavilion
Boston, MA
Bad Habit on Facebook

Review by Gillian Daniels

Cultural erasure and the silencing power of colonialism—Translations is not a play that minces words. It’s a tragedy of linguistics. During the 19th century, the English army seeks to map out the Irish countryside, specifically the town of Baile Beag. In order to have unified names for the maps they draw, the soldiers end up Anglicizing the Gaelic names of rivers, roads, and mountain ridges. Staged by Bad Habit Productions, this play rages at the disappearance of local tradition in the name of Imperialism. Continue reading