BOSTON: Huntington Theatre Company has announced the launch of a new series of short audio plays entitled Dream Boston, for which commissioned playwrights have been asked to imagine the future of Beantown. Two of the plays are now available on the site, and others will be released in coming weeks. Huntington Playwriting Fellow alumni Kirsten Greenidge, Kate Snodgrass, Brenda Withers, and Huntington artist-in-residence Melinda Lopez have penned the first round of plays, all set on future dates in Boston.
“These micro-plays are a response to the moment—to theatres being shut down, and wanting to gather to create art with friends and neighbors in a time when we can’t assemble,” said Huntington artistic staff member Charles Haugland in a statement. “But in a deeper sense, we want them to be hopeful about our collective future. Hope is a tricky word right now—easy for it to ring false. What we love is that each writer has found a way to write about the promise of one possible future in a way that is contrasted with a deep range of ideas and emotions.”
To produce the plays safely, Huntington sound engineer Valentin Frank created a package of sterilized recording equipment to be delivered to each actor with explicit instructions on its use and return. Rehearsals and recordings for the audio plays were conducted virtually on Zoom. Huntington artistic staff members Rebecca Bradshaw, Caley Chase, and Rosalind Bevan, directed and produced the shows under a SAG-AFTRA collective bargaining agreement. Dramaturgy for the project was completed by Melinda Lopez, J. Sebastián Alberdi, Melory Mirashrafi, and Charles Haugland.
The current Dream Boston plays are:
Overture by Kate Snodgrass, featuring actors Elle Borders and Richard Snee, takes place on the top of MIT’s Great Dome during the Boston Pops concert on July 4, 2024.
By the Rude Bridge by Melinda Lopez and featuring actor Lonnie Farmer, is set by the Concord Bridge at the Minuteman National Historical Park on Patriots’ Day on April 19, 2025.
McKim by Brenda Withers, featuring actors Krystal Hernandez and Nael Nacer, takes place in Bates Hall of the Boston Public Library’s McKim Building on January 16, 2023.
The 54th in ’22 by Kirsten Greenidge, featuring actors Brandon G. Green and Lyndsay Allyn Cox, is set at the Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial on the edge of Boston Common, in spring of 2022.
