Tara Forseth (left) as Mary and Adriana Alvarez as Jo in Mother Mary, a romantic comedy by KJ Moran Velz, on stage at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through October 26. Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography

Theatre

Stories of Love and Resistance on Stage at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre This Season

Lineup reflects the current moment through drama, comedy

A queer rom/com, a play about a real-life Armenian writer and activist who stood up to tyranny, and staged readings by Boston University playwrights that include a murder mystery and a time-bending comedy about AI and the value of work: these are the highlights of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s 2025-2026 season, 

“I feel incredibly proud of this season,” says Megan Sandberg-Zakian, BPT artistic director. “When I look at the breadth of the different stories being told and the really strong points of view about living in this moment, I feel very moved. As a new play theater, we’re providing a laboratory and an incubator for thinking about how we move forward together through the times that we’re in.” 

BPT’s season kicked off with an unprecedented collaboration with the School of Theatre, Boston’s CHUANG Stage, and the Huntington Theatre Company for the world premiere of Mfoniso Udofia’s The Ceremony. The show, whose sold-out run at Boston University’s Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre recently concluded, is part of a nine-play cycle about a Nigerian American family. 

Next up is Mother Mary, a romantic comedy by Boston native KJ Moran Velz. Set in Boston in 1968, the play explores the unexpected connection between Jo Cruz, a butch Puerto Rican taxi driver, and Mary O’Sullivan, a teacher at a Catholic elementary school. When Mary finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, Jo helps her secure an illegal abortion. As their friendship deepens, the two characters fall in love.

Moran Velz began work on the play in 2021, but says the project took on a heightened urgency after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade a year later. 

“Though the play takes place in 1968, so much of what happens in it is still relevant,” Moran Velz says. “Mary, like many women in the United States today, has to cross state lines to procure an abortion… Today, she would not be able to get an abortion in more than 20 states. Jo is questioned about her gender at every turn. Mary and Jo face discrimination, harassment, and legal and sociopolitical hurdles of all kinds, but they choose each other and their love, despite everything.”

The play began with workshops and readings at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va., and Wooly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., where Moran Velz lives. 

Despite the play’s weighty issues, “it has a lot of lightness and delight, and joy,” says Sandberg-Zakian, who first met Moran Velz when the playwright and her wife attended a production at BPT. Moran Velz later sent her an email about her work and her interest in Boston queer history. The BPT team read the play and found it really funny, and Sandberg-Zakian felt it was a perfect fit for them.

“We need work that talks about the history of our city, we need work that talks about the fact that we’ve been in a place before where queer relationships are under attack,” she says. “And we need to feel there is hope and there is joy…that all of these good things come to us even when times are really hard.” 

In December, BPT will host its third annual Jack Welch Development Residency, which will include public readings of two new plays by alumni of BU’s Playwriting Program: Residency recipient Walt McGough’s Clockwork and Crime Fiction by Jack Welch Developmental Fellowship awardee Deirdre Girard (GRS’10). McGough (GRS’10) will spend the semester working with collaborators on a play that deals with AI and explores big questions, like what constitutes meaningful work and what kind of work makes our lives and those around us better? 

Sandberg-Zakian describes Crime Fiction as “my guilty pleasure play of the season.” The latest work by award-winning playwright Girard, Crime Fiction is a murder mystery.

“I picked it partially because it feels like a cross between Gone Girl and Knives Out Sandberg-Zakian says. “It’s a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat show with many twists and turns, and I think audiences will really enjoy it.”

Following that, in February BPT will stage a production of a very different nature, the world premiere of Zabel in Exile, a memory play about real-life Armenian activist and writer Zabel Yessayan. Set in 1937, near the end of her life, the drama finds Yessayan imprisoned in Soviet Armenia, facing a death sentence and reckoning with questions like how an artist bears witness during dark moments in history and how one struggles to find hope when surrounded by bleakness.

Sandberg-Zakian has been intimately involved in the play’s evolution from the beginning. Local writer, editor, and devoted theater-goer Judith Sarayan had edited English translations of several of Yessayan’s books. She introduced herself to the BPT artistic director and at one point mentioned that she thought it would be great to have a play based on some of Yessayan’s works. Sandberg-Zakian worked with her on how to structure a commission for a play, and Sarayan began talking to a number of playwrights, eventually selecting R.N. Sandberg, Sandberg-Zakian’s father. Sarayan appreciated his framing of the play: as the Armenian activist was reckoning with the events of her life while being sentenced to death in a Soviet prison. 

“I was delighted by Judy’s choice, not only because I loved the proposal, but also because the playwright is my father,” Sandberg-Zakian says. 

Father and daughter have been collaborating on the play for several years, including a series of workshops at Lowell’s Merrimack Repertory Theatre, which had initially commissioned the play.

Sandberg-Zakian says that the chance to work with her father on a long-term project like this has been awesome, and that in the process, she’s learned a great deal about her own Armenian family history. 

She says the play, though set nearly 70 years in the past, addresses themes that have a direct corollary to the current political landscape. “Much of Yessayan’s work addresses the dangers of nationalism. She also had a lot of empathy and compassion for people from different backgrounds and an interest in finding ways for people to work across lines of difference.” 

The season will conclude, as it does each year, with the Boston Theater Marathon, now in its 28th year. The event, an all-day marathon of new, 10-minute plays chosen from submissions by New England playwrights, benefits the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial support to members of the local theater community in need of assistance. 

Asked what she hopes audiences take away from this year’s productions: “I hope that these plays convey the importance of finding light in dark times,” Sandberg-Zakian says, “and remind audiences that there’s a spark of light inside all of us, a human impulse towards justice and love that’s incredibly strong and impossible to extinguish.” 

Mother Mary plays at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre Kate Snodgrass Stage October 16 to 19 and October 23 to 26, 949 Commonwealth Ave. Single tickets: adults, $40; BU faculty/staff, $25; seniors (62+), $25; students with valid ID, $15; Boston University student rush (at the box office, day-of performances only), free. Purchase tickets here.