Boston Playwrights' Theatre Announces 2022-23 Season

Boston Playwrights' Theatre has announced the new plays that will comprise its 2022-2023 season. The line-up includes Eat Your Young by J.C. Pankratz, Sävë thë Whälës, etc. by David L. Caruso, OTP by Elise Wien, Jado Jehad by Fatima A. Maan and Alligator-a-Phobia in 3D! by Jay Eddy.

"I am thrilled that I get to produce these five extraordinary new works in my first season at BPT," Megan Sandberg-Zakian, BPT's newly-announced Artistic Director, says. "These writers are ambitious, iconoclastic and full of heart, and their plays will take audiences from a nightmarish wilderness camp to the last glacier on earth to Obama fan fiction on a beach in the Caribbean to three generations of women negotiating love and loss in Lahore, Pakistan...and finally, to a swamp full of singing alligators."

All of this season's plays were written by the Boston University M.F.A. Playwriting Program class of 2023.

"Though the season ranges wildly in tone and subject matter, there are some strong themes that reverberate throughout," Sandberg-Zakian says. "This group of writers-whose entire graduate education has taken place during a global pandemic-offers us critical reflections on the big questions of this moment: 'How do we live when we feel like the world is ending?' and 'If our very survival depends on resisting old ideas and seeding new ones, what stories must we tell-and how?'"

The season opens in October with Eat Your Young by J.C. Pankratz, directed by Shamus, about four mismatched teens enrolled together in a new-age wilderness therapy program. They quickly realize they must band together to survive-but is the enemy the natural world, the program itself...or something a little more sinister? This funny, magical, chaotic play explores the nature of healing, trans identity, and the defiant power of imagination.

Next, in November, is David L. Caruso's Sävë thë Whälës, etc., directed by Noah Putterman, an environmental comedy which follows two Americans and two Canadians on a tour of the last glacier on Earth. As they race to comprehend the final messages from the melting ice, they consider how to best use our remaining time together on this planet-and discover that delight, and even hope, are still possible.

OTP by Elise Wien, directed by Enzo Gonzales, opens in early December. Set in 2015, the comedy centers on 15-year-old best friends Ceci and Michelle. By day, they're students in Oak Park, Illinois. By night, they take the internet by storm, crafting an alternate universe where a teenage President Obama courts the teenage President of Oak Park High School- and takes her political advice. A lyrical and engaging love letter to fan fiction and teenage friendship, OTP also asks how the stories we tell ourselves and others shape our political discourse and our sense of civic responsibility.

Jado Jehad by Fatima A. Maan, a family play about three generations of Pakistani women, follows in February. Framed by Urdu poetry, ranging over two continents and three languages, this play hopscotches through space and time to track the effort and heartache it takes to arrive at true trust and acceptance.

The season closes in April with Jay Eddy's Alligator-a-Phobia in 3D!, a play with music directed by Shamus. Alligator-a-Phobia in 3D! is a door farce/monster movie mashup about obsession and isolation-an absurd horror-comedy...with plenty of song and dance. This delightfully silly and ridiculously serious new work gives us a swampy adventure about love, quarantine, and how to keep from being consumed-literally-when the chaos outside turns up inside.

The plays will be co-produced with the Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Theatre as part of its New Play Initiative.

BPT's COVID-19 Safety procedures proved to be very effective in keeping audiences and performers safe last season; audiences will be required to wear masks for the duration of their time at the theatre. 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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