Boston Playwrights' Theatre Announces 2021-2022 Season

Boston Playwrights' Theatre (BPT) today announces the new plays that will comprise its 2021-2022 season. The line-up includes LORENA: a Tabloid Epic by Eliana Pipes, Gone Nowhere by Daniel C. Blanda, Incels and Other Myths by Ally Sass, Rx Machina by Caity-Shea Violette and Beasts by Cayenne Douglass.

"These five plays illustrate everything we've been aiming for in our 40 years of celebrating new work," BPT Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass says. "They are wide-ranging in their themes and conjure the important topics facing us in this ever-changing, sometimes dangerous, world we live in. These playwrights' innovative imaginations know no bounds, and I'm honored and excited to be producing their work."

All of this season's plays were written by the Boston University M.F.A. Playwriting Program class of 2021. Originally slated for BPT's 2020-2021 season, the productions were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. BPT will resume in-person performances this fall. The plays will be co-produced with the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theatre as part of its New Play Initiative.

The season opens in October with LORENA: a Tabloid Epic by Eliana Pipes, a fantastical examination of the media hailstorm surrounding Lorena Bobbitt, who became a sensation after she used a kitchen knife against her abusive husband in 1993. The play will be directed by Erica Terpening-Romeo. Pipes was the 2021 recipient of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival's (KCACTF) Harold and Mimi Steinberg National Student Playwriting Award for her play DREAM HOU$E, which receives its world premiere at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre this season as the winner of the theatre's 2021/22 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition.

Next, in November, is Daniel C. Blanda's Gone Nowhere (directed by Noah Putterman), about Riley, a young man who, in the wake of his father's death, has left the trappings of the big city to seek peace in the great outdoors with a visit to his old friend Hunter. Blanda is the author of No Service North of 96thand Shoulda Coulda Woulda. In 2020, Blanda's Isla and Her Earth won the KCACTF Region 1 Planet Earth Arts Playwriting Prize for ten-minute plays that address issues of climate change, the environment and surrounding issues of urgent concern. Blanda is the Head of Publishing at E2G Sports.

Incels and Other Myths by Ally Sass, directed by Erica Terpening-Romeo, opens in early December. The drama centers on Elaine, a professor of Women in Mythology, who grows concerned when son Avery spends much of his time playing the online adventure game, Oracle. Sass's play Zygote was a semifinalist for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and her Late Night at the Serpent was a finalist for KCACTF's John Cauble Outstanding Short Play Award.

Rx Machina by Caity-Shea Violette, an examination of big pharma's impact on everyday American culture through the eyes of five women on the frontlines of the opioid epidemic, follows in February with Blair Cadden directing. Violette is the recipient of numerous national awards for playwriting, including KCACTF's Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting and Gary Garrison National Ten-Minute Play Awards, and a 2020 Gold Prize win in Portland Stage's Clauder Competition for Rx Machina.

The season closes in April with Cayenne Douglass's drama Beasts, directed by Kelly Galvin. In Beasts, secrets are unearthed when artist Judy pays a surprise visit to her pregnant suburbanite sister Fran. Douglass's works have been developed or produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Take Ten Theatre Masters, Dixon Place and New Perspectives Theatre. Her play Maiden Voyage is featured on The Kilroys' List, received three playwriting awards from KCACTF and was a Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist in 2021.

Audiences will be required to wear masks and show proof of COVID-19 vaccination to attend performances. Up-to-the-minute information regarding performance schedules, COVID-19 protocols and ticketing can be found on the BPT website (www.BostonPlaywrights.org) under Visit Us > COVID-19 Safety.

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