Mr. Parent at Boston Playwrights' Theatre

Maurice Emmanuel Parent

Central Square Theater: The Mountaintop, The Convert, Dangerous Liaisons, Angels in America Parts 1 & 2, Director – Ain’t Misbehavin’. Other credits (select): Directing – Choir Boy (SpeakEasy Stage Company), Breath and Imagination (Lyric Stage Company of Boston). Acting – Actors’ Shakespeare Project (resident company member), Barrington Stage Company, Boston Theatre Works, Cape Playhouse, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Fulton Opera House, Greater Boston Stage Company, The Huntington, Music Theatre of Wichita, New Repertory Theatre, Northern Stage, Off the Grid Theatre Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Wheelock Family Theatre. Television: Castle Rock, Kevin Can F*** Himself. Winner of three Elliot Norton Awards (most recently the 2023 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director, Midsize Theatre for Seven Guitars for Actors’ Shakespeare Project), and three Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Awards. Currently he is a Professor of the Practice in the Tufts University Department of Theatre Dance and Performance Studies and the Co-Founder/Co-Producing Artistic Director of The Front Porch Arts Collective, a Black theater company committed to advancing racial equity through art. First incubated at Central Square Theater, “The Porch” is currently the theatre in residence at The Huntington. His one man show Mr. Parent, co-written with Melinda Lopez and conceived with Megan Sandberg-Zakian, will be part of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s 2023-2024 season.

Melinda Lopez

MELINDA LOPEZ is an actor and playwright based in Boston. She is thrilled to be partnering with dear friends and colleagues Maurice and Megan to bring this joyful powerful story to the stage. Her work includes Mala, an adaptation of Yerma, Back the Night, Becoming Cuba, Orchids to Octopi, Sonia Flew, the audio series Dream Boston, and coming to the Old Globe in San Diego this spring, Stir, adapted from her Elliot Norton Award-winning Zoom play Black Beans Project.

Megan Sandberg-Zakian

MEGAN SANDBERG-ZAKIAN is a theater director, author, and facilitator with a passion for the development of vital new American plays for the stage and the ear. Across all facets of her work, she focuses on holding space for difficult conversations, facilitating engagements that can accommodate multiple complex truths and allow buried narratives to emerge. She is currently the Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights Theatre, an award-winning professional theater dedicated to new work for the stage located on the campus of Boston University. Favorite recent directing projects include Nat Turner in Jerusalem (New York Theatre Workshop), House of Joy (California Shakespeare Theatre), Skeleton Crew (Huntington Theatre Co), The High Ground (Arena Stage), and Audible Originals Rapture Season and Evil Eye (Audie Award for Best Original Work; Gracie Award for Original Online Programming). Megan is a graduate of Brown University and holds an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. She is a recipient of the Princess Grace Theater Award and the TCG Future Leaders fellowship, an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and a proud member of SDC, the union for professional stage directors and choreographers. Her book, There Must Be Happy Endings: On a Theater of Optimism and Honesty is available from The 3rd Thing Press. She lives in Jamaica Plain, MA, with her wife Candice. Megansz.com