Boston Playwrights’ Theatre Announces 2025-2026 Season

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (BPT) just announced its 2025-2026 season—a line-up of bold new plays that cross cultures, generations and borders, featuring stories of love, intersectionality and resistance.

“Our 2025-26 Season meets the current moment in ways that I find deeply moving,” BPT Artistic Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian says. “It starts with an interracial couple trying to plan a wedding that captures the complex beauty of their union, continues with a queer romcom set in Boston, and finishes with the story of an Armenian feminist writer and activist who stood up to tyranny. All three plays tell stories of characters who work to stay connected to joy, love, and light even when confronted with all the darkness that humanity has to offer. I’m in awe of how much these writers have captured; BPT is so lucky to be part of bringing these works into the world, especially at this particular moment."

The season opens with The Ceremony by Mfoniso Udofia (September 11-October 5), a multigenerational story that intertwines Nigerian and Nepali cultural traditions. As Ekong and Lumanti plan their wedding, the absence of their estranged fathers casts a shadow over their joyful union. But a sudden change of heart leads to a daring attempt at healing, in a story that explores what it means to love and make tradition whole in a fractured world. The Ceremony, directed by Kevin R. Free, is part of The Huntington's nine-play Ufot Family Cycle and is produced in partnership with CHUANG Stage and Boston University's School of Theatre.

Next, audiences journey to 1960s Boston in Mother Mary by KJ Moran Velz (October 9-26), a new romantic comedy centered on the unexpected connection between Jo Cruz, a Puerto Rican taxi driver, and Mary O’Sullivan, an Irish Catholic school teacher. Despite rising tensions between their communities, Mary and Jo find themselves in a close friendship…or is it something more? But their growing connection takes a turn when Mary asks Jo to take her on a risky road trip where there’s no going back. The production will be directed by Elaine Vaan Hogue, Professor Emerita, Boston University School of Theatre.

In December, BPT’s third annual Jack Welch Developmental Residency culminates in public readings of two new plays: Residency recipient Walt McGough’s Clockwork and Jack Welch Developmental Fellowship awardee Deirdre Girard’s Crime Fiction. The Residency provides 30 hours of development time for McGough to explore and evolve his new play with collaborators. New this year, the Jack Welch Developmental Fellowship supports a play ready for a public reading. McGough and Girard both graduated from Boston University’s Playwriting Program in 2010.

R.N. Sandberg's Zabel in Exile (February 19-March 8), a powerful memory play set in a Soviet prison in 1937, opens in February. Here, Armenian writer and activist Zabel Yessayan confronts her captors and the ghosts of her past. As personal and political histories collide, Zabel confronts what it means to resist—and to remember—when the very worst of human history repeats itself. BPT Artistic Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian will direct, in a unique and meaningful collaboration with her father, who is the playwright. The pair have previously developed and workshopped the play at Merrimack Repertory Theatre and The Armenian Museum in Watertown. This production is sponsored by Victor Zarougian and Judith Saryan, one of the editors of the English translations of Yessayan’s work.

The season closes with Boston Theater Marathon XXVIII (May 3). The BTM is an award-winning all-day “marathon” of new ten-minute plays chosen from submissions from New England playwrights and produced by New England theatre companies. The annual event benefits the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, an organization that provides financial relief to individual theatre practitioners in Greater Boston.

This season, BPT is also announcing the inauguration of a revamped program and a new partnership, both designed to lift up the new play sector. The BPT New Play Incubator Program lowers barriers for the full production of new plays through subsidized space rental rates and meaningful partnership and mentorship with BPT staff. Each year, BPT will announce a cohort of Incubator projects – adding a slate of productions of new work to the Boston theater season each year! In addition, BPT is excited to partner with the New England New Play Alliance to help produce NPA’s new play newsletter, a unique resource for our theater community that grows audiences with announcements and exposure to new play productions across the region. Further details about both of these programs are available on the BPT website.

ABOUT BOSTON PLAYWRIGHTS’ THEATRE

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre is an award-winning professional theatre dedicated to new works for the stage founded in 1981 by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. Located on the campus of Boston University, we produce a season of new work, an annual “marathon” of ten-minute plays, and a festival of teenage writers. As the home of the Boston University MFA in Playwriting, we nurture the work of our graduate students through workshops and developmental productions. In addition, MFA Playwrights are closely involved in all facets of BPT—backstage, front of house, and everywhere in between, from education programs to social media management to curation and season selection.

Our alumni have had their work produced around the country and the world, on Broadway, on Netflix, and in wonderful regional theaters large and small. Our alums include Melinda Lopez, Ronán Noone, Molly Smith Metzler, Zayd Dohrn, Alexis Scheer, Eliana Pipes, Karen Zacarías, and many more extraordinary writers and humans.

ABOUT THE UFOT FAMILY CYCLE

The Ufot Family Cycle is an unprecedented two-year city-wide festival where theatres and arts organizations around Greater Boston have united to produce Mfoniso Udofia’s cycle of plays in partnership with universities, social organizations, non-profits, and a host of community activation partners. Learn more here.

ABOUT THE BOSTON THEATER MARATHON

The Boston Theater Marathon (BTM) is an award-winning all-day “marathon” of new ten-minute plays. The plays are chosen from submissions from New England playwrights, and the selected plays are produced by New England theatre companies that donate their time to this event. Generously supported by the Boston University Center for the Humanities and by individual donations, the BTM gifts net proceeds to the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, an organization helping area theatre artists and companies in crisis.

In 2000, the BTM received a special Elliot Norton Award from the Boston Theatre Critics Association for “Enlivening Local Theatre.” The beloved annual event celebrated its silver anniversary in 2023.

ABOUT THIS SEASON’S PLAYWRIGHTS

Deirdre Girard, who earned her M.F.A. in Playwriting at Boston University, has had dozens of award-winning short plays produced worldwide, and several full-length productions. Her work, often in the mystery/horror genre, has been published by Applause Books, Smith and Kraus, Next Stage Press and Heuer Publishing. Deirdre's short horror piece The Night Visitor was made into a film by acclaimed international filmmaker Prataya Saha. Most recently, her play A Year to Grieve was selected for Smith and Kraus’s Best 10-Minute Plays of 2025, her collection Short & Scary II was produced by The Actors Studio of Newburyport (MA) in October of 2024, and an evening of female-centric shorts, Women at the Center, was produced by Chapel Players (DE) in November 2024. Her full-length play Crime Fiction is a finalist in both the ScreenCraft 2025 stage play competition and the Centenary Stage Women Playwrights Series, and was named to the Coverfly Red List.

Walt McGough is a Boston-based playwright (by way of Pittsburgh and Chicago). In Boston, he has held fellowships with both the Huntington and New Repertory Theatre Companies, and was a finalist for the 2016 Dramatists Guild Lanford Wilson Award. His plays include Pattern of Life, which was named Best New Play by the Independent Reviewers of New England, and The Farm, Priscilla Dreams the Answer, and Paper City Phoenix, all of which received Best New Play IRNE nominations. Other plays include Chalk, Dante Dies!! (And Then Things Get Weird), The Haberdasher!, and Non-Player Character. He has worked around the country with companies such as The Lark, the Huntington, New Rep, the Kennedy Center, NNPN, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Fresh Ink, Sideshow, Orfeo Group, Nu Sass Productions, Chicago Dramatists, and Argos. In 2015, his play Advice for Astronauts was selected as the winner of the Milken Playwriting Prize. He has served on the staff at SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston and Chicago Dramatists, and is a founding ensemble member of Chicago’s Sideshow Theatre Company. He holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Boston University.

KJ MORAN VELZ is a playwright, educator, and future drama therapist whose work has been performed at Signature Theatre, the Kennedy Center, Imagination Stage, NextStop Theatre, Flying V, Rorschach Theatre, Adventure Theatre MTC, and Theater Alliance. Mother Mary is her Boston Playwrights’ Theatre debut. She graduated from Georgetown University with degrees in Spanish and Theater and Performance Studies, and she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Drama Therapy at Lesley University. Much of her work—both clinical and artistic—focuses on the intersections of language, religion, race, and ethnicity. In her writing, educational, and clinical work, her priority is always connection, curiosity, and relationship above all else.

R.N. SANDBERG’s plays have been seen at theaters throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, Asia, and Australia and are available from Dramatic Publishing Company and Playscripts. His work includes adaptations of Anne of Green Gables, Frankenstein, A Little Princess, The Odyssey, and the original plays Convivencia, Done, In Between, Jarpteetza/The Firebird, The Judgment of Bett, Mad Dreams, What Can’t Be Seen, and Roundelay. He has been commissioned by, among others, American Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, and the Seattle Rep. For many years, he taught playwriting, acting and dramatic literature at Princeton University where he received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. https://www.rnsandberg.com/