Plays in Place Store

Production of A New Era indefinitely postponed

August 11, 2025/in Production/by Patrick

Due to severe budget cuts and disruptions to the National Park Service, our production of A New Era, originally planned for this August and September at the King’s Chapel Parish House in Boston has been indefinitely postponed, as is the remainder of the Suffrage in Black & White Series. This is heartbreaking news for our entire team.

We will provide updates as they become available. These plays, created and developed over the past six years, dramatize important moments in the history of the intersection of the fight for abolition and woman suffrage.

Reservations to Kittie Knox open Wednesday!

August 11, 2025/in Production/by Patrick

That’s right, The Kittie Knox Plays are coming to Boston, Cambridge, and Milton next month, and free tickets can be reserved starting on Wednesday.

The plays will appear at:

Cambridge Crossing, East Cambridge, September 13
Eustis Estate Museum & Study Center, Milton, September 20
Herter Park, Boston, September 27

Performances are at 11am, 2pm, and 4:30pm on each day. Rain dates are on Sundays (Sept. 14, 21, 28).

Kittie Knox was a young biracial cyclist who fought against race-based limitations in America’s post-Reconstruction reaction against Black advancement. During her cycling career (1893 – 1899), she became a well-known century (100-mile) rider, protested the League of American Wheelmen’s color bar, and refused to conform to conventions about “lady-like” speed, and fashion while cycling. The plays chronicle the dramatic story of a turbulent time in America’s history with lessons for today’s struggle for racial and gender equality and justice.

See Kittie’s story brought to life in The Kittie Knox Plays, a trilogy of plays performed outdoors (with bikes!). Audiences will move from play to play, guided by our production team. Immerse yourself in live theater as you’ve never seen it before!

We hope to see you at the show next month!

Revolution’s Edge reading in Boston Friday, April 18th

April 16, 2025/in Production/by Patrick

Tickets on sale for A Light Under the Dome

March 18, 2025/in Readings/by Patrick

Tickets are available now for our Northampton reading of A Light Under the Dome

On February 21, 1838, exiled Southerner Angelina Grimke became the first American woman to address a legislative body when she delivered a speech about abolition and the full citizenship of American women at the Massachusetts State House.

A Light Under the Dome brings us to this moment in history, showcasing Grimke and taking us inside the minds and hearts of four abolitionist and suffragist leaders–Maria Weston Chapman, Susan Paul, Julia Williams, and Lydia Maria Child, who in 1838 was living in Northampton. As Grimke readies herself for this moment, her four friends help support and guide her through this pressure-packed moment.

Originally commissioned by the National Park Service as part of Plays in Place’s Suffrage in Black and White series, this play was performed to sold-out audiences under the dome of the Massachusetts State House in 2024.

The readings take place on Wednesday April 2 and Thursday April 3 at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, 220 Main Street, Florence. Tickets are going fast.

Don’t miss this chance to see this powerful and inspirational exploration of the struggle for rights and justice in the face overwhelming opposition.

The Year Ahead for Plays in Place

February 13, 2025/in Production/by Brianna

We have a busy year ahead!

We are very excited to be working on so many wonderful projects and partnerships this year. Be sure to mark your calendars so you don’t miss any of our events.

Here’s a quick list of Plays in Place’s upcoming 2025 public projects:

March 5 & 6. A reading of Blood on the Snow by Patrick Gabridge, in partnership with Historic Northampton, at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence. Tickets are available now. Directed by Brianna Sloane.
April 2 & 3. A reading of A Light Under the Dome by Patrick Gabridge, in partnership with Historic Northampton, at the Unitarian Society of Florence and Northampton. Directed by Brianna Sloane.
April 5 & 6. A reading of Hot Love in the Moonlight by Patrick Gabridge, part of a celebration of the Mount Auburn Cemetery Artist-in-Residence program, Cambridge, MA. Directed by Frances Hellums. Get tickets here.
April 18. A reading of Revolution’s Edge by Patrick Gabridge in Boston, in partnership with Old North Illuminated. FREE. More info here. Directed by Jess Meyer.
May 10. A panel discussion on dramatizing sports history, at Boston’s West End Museum. Producing Artistic Director Patrick Gabridge will talking about The Kittie Knox Plays. Get tickets here.
May 18. MassBike’s Kittie Knox Ride, which fosters awareness of Kittie Knox, a young biracial cyclist in the 1890s who fought against race and gender-based limitations. The ride will help raise funds for The Kittie Knox Plays. Register for the ride here.
August 27-September 6. Production of A New Era by Miranda ADEkoje, for the National Parks of Boston, at the King’s Chapel Parish House on Beacon Hill. Shows Wed-Sat, FREE but will fill up fast. This play explores the first National Convention of Colored Women, held in Boston in 1895, led by Josephine St. Pierre-Ruffin. Directed by Summer L. Williams.
September 6-27. Production of The Kittie Knox Plays by Patrick Gabridge, Claire Gardner, and Kirsten Greenidge. Shows on Saturdays at 11am, 2pm, 5pm, in Boston, Cambridge, and Milton. A fun “bike-specific” set of plays, in partnership with MassBike. Directed by Michelle Aguillon.We’re still raising funds for this project. Please donate if you can.
November 12-15. Concert reading of A Revelation of Character by Patrick Gabridge, at the Boston Public Library’s Rabb Hall. (FREE, tickets will go fast.) This is a new play about the Boston abolition movement and the fractured friendship of Lydia Maria Child and Maria Weston Chapman. Directed by Lisa Rafferty. In partnership with the Associates of the Boston Public Library.

And those are just the public events. We’re also busy behind the scenes, creating more new plays for the Old New-Gate Prison & Copper Mine in Connecticut; the Hunter House in Newport; Historic Deerfield; Historic Northampton; and the last installment of Suffrage in Black & White for the National Parks of Boston, at Faneuil Hall. All this coming in 2026. (And you never know, maybe a few more).

Tickets are available now for our Northampton reading of Blood on The Snow!

On March 5, 1770, British soldiers in Boston killed four unarmed civilians and wounded eight more in what is known today as the Boston Massacre. This play focuses on the events that took place the day after–March 6, 1770—when the leaders of Boston gathered in the Council Chamber of what is now the Old State House and made decisions that placed Massachusetts on the road to revolution.

These live readings, 255 years to the day after the events took place, will be the first time this play has been performed outside of Boston.

Sign up for our newsletter! Future emails will provide more details on ticketing and showtimes, as they become available.

We hope to see you at one of our events this year!

The Season of Giving: Support the Kittie Knox Plays

December 28, 2024/in Production/by Brianna

We need your help!

At Plays in Place, we do things differently. The entire structure of our company is designed so we don’t usually conduct fundraising campaigns for our shows. At our company, more than 60% of the budget goes directly to artists. (We hire more than 80 theatre artists every year.) We have very low overhead—almost every dollar we spend goes right into making new site-specific plays.

But The Kittie Knox Plays isn’t quite like our other projects. We need to raise $100,000 to get this collection of plays about barrier-breaking cyclist Kittie Knox and her friends fully staged in Massachusetts, published, and then launched towards additional productions across the country. We’re feverishly writing grants and talking to foundations and possible sponsors, but it’s going to take all kinds and sizes of support.

In this season of giving, we hope that you will help support this project today.

Donate to The Kitty Knox Plays

Our plan is to produce The Kittie Knox Plays by Patrick Gabridge, Claire Gardner, and Kirsten Greenidge in Boston, Cambridge, and Martha’s Vineyard in September 2025. Michelle Aguillon will direct the shows, and MassBike is our non-profit partner.

The show will feature a cast of nine actors with nine bikes! Here’s Kiera Prusmack, Kim Blaise, and Hampton Richards at a new play workshop at Cambridge Crossing, with bikes:

And here’s a short video we put together about The Kittie Knox Plays:

Kittie Knox was a young biracial cyclist in the 1890s who fought against race-based limitations in America’s post-Reconstruction reaction against Black advancement. During her cycling career (1893–1899), she became a well-known century (100-mile) rider, protested the League of American Wheelmen’s color bar in 1895, and refused to conform to conventions about fast riding and wearing a long skirt while cycling. This is a dramatic story of a turbulent time in America’s history with lessons for today’s struggle for racial and gender equality and justice.

We work on plays just about everywhere. In April we read The Kittie Knox Plays at Landry’s Bike Shop in Boston:

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Donate to The Kittie Knox Plays

We wish you all a joyful holiday season and hope to see you at one of our shows in 2025!

Best wishes,

Patrick

Patrick Gabridge

Producing Artistic Director

Plays in Place

Spotlight: The Artist-in-Residence Program at Mount Auburn Cemetery

November 6, 2024/in Production/by Brianna

Mount Auburn Cemetery is a longtime partner of Plays in Place, sponsoring some of our earliest productions. We are featuring them today because we want to share the recent coverage of the Artist-in-Residency program on Watertown Cable News, which also highlights Plays in Place. Mount Auburn was founded in 1831, and their mission has always […]