Stories of Love and Resistance on Stage at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre This Season
Lineup reflects the current moment through drama, comedy
Photo by Benjamin Rose Photography
Stories of Love and Resistance on Stage at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre This Season
Lineup reflects the current moment through drama, comedy
This article was originally published in BU Today on October 10, 2025. By John O’Rourke
EXCERPT
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 BU 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.
…
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?
…
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.
I hope that these plays convey the importance of finding light in dark times, 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.
…
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 local theater community members in need of assistance.
more on bpt’s season in bu today
RELIEVE THE CEREMONY
Mfoniso Udofia continues her Ufot Family Cycle with a vibrant, heartwarming celebration of love, intertwining Nigerian and Nepali cultures.