SpeakEasy Stage Company to Present New England Premiere of Robert O'Hara's BOOTYCANDY

From March 12 to April 9, 2016, SpeakEasy Stage Company will proudly present the New England Premiere of BOOTYCANDY, a shockingly funny and saucy spin on race, sex, and sexuality, written by award-winning playwright and director Robert O'Hara.

Named one of the Top Ten Plays of 2014 by The New York Times, BOOTYCANDY is based on the author's own experiences growing up black and gay. The play unfolds in a series of loosely linked vignettes that take no prisoners when confronting racial, sexual, and cultural stereotypes. With outrageous humor and real heart, O'Hara tests how we talk about our bodies at home, in church, and in the theatre. (Please note that BOOTYCANDY contains strong language, adult content, and nudity).

Robert O'Hara has received the NAACP Best Director Award, the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play, two OBIEs and the Oppenheimer Award. He directed the World Premieres of Nikkole Salter and Dania Guiria's In the Continuum, Tarell McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2), Colman Domingo's Wild with Happy as well as his own plays, Bootycandy and Insurrection: Holding History. His new plays, Zombie: The American and Barbecue, had their World Premieres this season at Woolly Mammoth Theatre and New York Shakespeare Festival, respectively.

Summer L. Williams will be making her SpeakEasy Stage directing debut with BOOTYCANDY. She is a Boston-based freelance theatre director and a co-founder of Boston's Company One Theatre. Her most recent directing credits with Company One include An Octoroon by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins; Colossal by Andrew Hinderaker; Shiv as a part of The Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy by Aditi Brennen Kapil; Shelter of Last Resort by Miranda Craigwell as a part of XX PlayLab 2014; Jackie Sibblies Drury's We are Proud to Present ...; and Idris Goodwin's How We Got On.

The cast for this New England Premiere production is Johnny Lee Davenport, Jackie Davis, Tiffany Nichole Greene, John Kuntz, and Maurice Emmanuel Parent.

The design team is Jenna McFarland Lord (scenic); Amanda Mujica (costumes); Jen Rock (lighting) and David Wilson (sound).

BOOTYCANDY will run for five weeks, from March 12 through April 9, in the Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in Boston's South End.

Ticket prices start at $25, with discounts for students, seniors, and persons age 25 and under.

For tickets or more information, the public is invited to call the box office at 617.933.8600 or visit www.SpeakEasyStage.com .

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