Plays in Place staff:
Patrick Gabridge, Producing Artistic Director (also playwright: Cato & Dolly, The Nature Plays, The America Plays, Moonlight Abolitionists, Beloved Island: Windows on Campobello, Scipio’s Balcony, Suffrage in Black & White, A Light Under the Dome, Revolution’s Edge, The Optimist’s Razor)
Patrick has been telling stories on stage for more than 30 years. His early work writing and producing site-specific work began with Chameleon Stage in Colorado, where he produced and wrote plays for wild spaces in Theatre in the Wild (winning a Colorado Arts Innovation Award) and plays for parking lots for Asphalt Adventures.
In recent years, he’s returned to his site-specific explorations, writing Blood on the Snow for The Bostonian Society, which had sold out runs at The Old State House, and Both/And, a play about quantum entanglement, for the Central Square Theater and the MIT Museum. After founding Plays in Place, Patrick wrote and produced Cato & Dolly for The Bostonian Society, and was the artist-in-residence at the Mount Auburn Cemetery from 2018-2019, where he wrote and produced The America Plays, The Nature Plays, and Moonlight Abolitionists, all produced by Plays in Place.
Patrick’s other historical plays include Reading the Mind of God (about astronomers Kepler and Tycho), Fire on Earth (on the men behind the English Bible and Reformation), None but the Best (on 19th century Boston publisher and philanthropist, Daniel Sharp Ford), and The Prisoner of St. Pierre (about Auguste Ciparis and the eruption of Mt. Pele). His contemporary plays include Mox Nox, Drift, Blinders, Chore Monkeys, and Constant State of Panic, and have been produced and developed by theaters across the country. His short plays have received more than 1,000 productions from schools and theaters in 16 countries.
In addition to writing plays, Patrick is deeply involved with the New England and national theatre scene, and co-founded the New England New Play Alliance, and founded the online Playwright Marketing Binge. He also writes novels, screenplays, and audio plays. In his spare time, he likes to garden and fix up old houses.
JAZZMIN BONNER, co-producer
Jazzmin is a Boston native who has been working throughout the country as a Company Manager and Arts Administrator. She has worked at The Public Theatre in Lewiston, Maine, Cleveland Playhouse in Cleveland Ohio, the American Repertory Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Fresh Ink Theatre Company, StageSource, and with Plays in Place as a Co-Producer. She is a proud board member of Dunamis & Lyric Stage Company of Boston.
Jess Meyer, co-producer
Jess has a BFA in Theatre and Performance from Emerson College and is getting their ASL Interpreter Certification. Jess is passionate about the power of storytelling and accessibility in the arts. Their theatrical credits include Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Romeo and Juliet and the HandShakes Program Associate, Lyric Stage’s The Walking Plays (Director); Boston Playwrights’ Theater and Providence Fringe Festival’s Silvertone (Director); CentaStage and YASPLZ LLC’s Edinburgh Fringe Noir Hamlet (Assistant Stage Manager).
Plays in Place associated artists:
The Writers:
Miranda Austen ADEkoje (I Am This Place and Suffrage in Black & White: A New Era)
Miranda is a writer for stage and screen, producer and actress. She attended Brown University where she graduated with a B.A. in literature and cultures in English, after which she trained in London at the Rose Bruford college for Drama and received a Master’s degree with Distinction in Theatre Practices. Her plays include I Am This Place (Revolutionary Spaces/Plays in Place), Shelter of Last Resort (Front Porch Arts Collective Summer reading series, The Huntington Theatre Breaking Ground Reading Series, Company One XX PlayLab), 36 Days (Apollinaire Theatre New Play Night reading, Bob Jolly Fellowship Reading Series, Emerson College Student Workshop), The Strongest Shape (Paines Plough Future Perfect Finalist), Reply Please, Requests and Sugar Moth. Mrs. ADEkoje’s screen work includes Little Eyes (48-hour film festival semi-finalist), The Last Shot, Red Monster, and she was a member of the writing team for the webseries ByChance, and The Halls seasons 1 and 2. Her audio play, Virtual Attendance, was recently produced by the Huntington Theatre Company as part of their Dream Boston series.
Mrs. Adekoje has performed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and Theatre Royal Stratford as well as being named the Farrago Central London Slam Poet champion. Stateside, Mrs. ADEkoje was a Playwright Fellow at the Tony award-winning Huntington Theatre and is currently a member of the MUTT play writing collective.
Mrs. Adekoje is an award-winning actress whose credits is currently a writer, director and producer for the Boston-based Production company, Beyond MEASURE Productions.
Ginger Lazarus (Suffrage in Black & White: Nothing But Victory!)
Ginger is a Boston-based playwright, screenwriter, and teacher. Her most recent work includes commissions for Lyric Stage Company, Central Square Theater, and In Good Company. Her play Burning was produced by Resonance Ensemble in New York and received the 2013 Boston My Theatre Award for Best New Play. Other productions include The Housekeeper, The Embryos (Fresh Ink Theatre), and Matter Familias (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 2004 IRNE nomination for Best New Play). Screenwriting credits include Mary, a film based on her stageplay, and creative consultant for the critically acclaimed Leave No Trace. Ginger holds an MA in playwriting from Boston University and teaches at University of Massachusetts Boston. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild and StageSource.
Talya Kingston (Pulling at the Roots)
Talya is a playwright, dramaturg and educator based in Western Massachusetts, who is inspired by the live interactions between artists and audiences and how these can be a catalyst for social change. She is the Associate Artistic Director at WAM Theatre and is co-producing and writing one of the Historic Northampton plays for Plays In Place. Her plays include: Port of Entry, Campus Unrest (finalist in the 2019 Bechdel Test Fest), Wave Goodbye (2020 PLAYground TYA Festival, semi-finalist for Provincetown Playhouse’s New Plays for Young Audiences), Sheryl Addresses the PGO (The New England Monologue Project) and Wishing on Satellites. As a dramaturg, Talya has worked at WAM Theatre, Hartford Stage, New York Fringe Festival, New Conservatory Theatre Center and the Ko Festival. Talya has an MFA in dramaturgy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a proud member of the Northampton Playwrights Lab, Play Incubation Collective, the Dramatists Guild and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.
Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed (Pulling at the Roots)
Jasmine [She/They](Nipmuc) is a Massachusetts based actor, singer/songwriter, playwright and director. Prior to the pandemic she produced free Shakespeare in the park at Look Park for 5 years under the name “Billy Shakes Free Shakespeare”, and graduated from Umass Amherst with degrees in Theatre, English, and a certificate from the 5 colleges in Native Studies. Most notably, Jasmine has written, produced, and acted in a musical about her tribe, the Nipmuc people of Massachusetts. This musical was titled 1675, and told the story of King Philips War and the Tragedy of Deer Island. This musical was performed at Umass Amherst to full houses in 2018 with plans to continue moving the show forward. She has also aided in the creation of the Native Youth Empowerment Foundation in Massachusetts, and the establishment of the Ohketeau Cultural Center. During the pandemic, Jasmine has been engaging in writing new musicals, plays, and continues to direct and perform when the opportunity arises.
Nina Louise Morrison (The Hale Farm Project in Beverly)
Nina is a theatre generator: playwright, director, deviser, dramaturg, actor, and teacher. She loves hearing new pages of new plays
out loud for the first time, brainstorming on blackboards, and creating great reckonings in small rooms. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council
Artist Fellow, Huntington Playwriting Fellow at the Huntington Theatre Company, and winner of the inaugural Boston Project commission at
SpeakEasy Stage Company. Her most recent play The Vault, a eco-thriller about the Global Seed Vault, was developed at the Huntington Theatre’s Summer Workshop. It was originally developed in the Greenhouse Playlab, a collaboration between Flat Earth Theatre Company and the Boston Museum of Science.
Other plays, including Forever Home, Born Naked, and Google Doll, have been developed by the Huntington Theatre Company, Project: Project, Fresh Ink Theatre Company, Company One, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Boston Playwrights Theatre, Rhombus, and many others. She is a Richard Rodgers Fellow, a Shubert Foundation grantee, and a semi-finalist for the National Playwrights Conference. She teaches playwriting, screenwriting, theatre history, and dramaturgy
at University of New Hampshire, and has also taught playwriting at Grub Street and Northeastern University.
Ken Green (The Hale Farm Project in Beverly)
KEN is a Chicagoan currently residing in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. His plays include 2020’s The Charles Lenox Experience, a historical “moving play” produced by New Repertory Theater in Watertown, Mass. Other plays include The Campaign, Your Favorite, and The F&L at 1330. Four of his short plays have been featured at the Boston Theater Marathon. His full-length audio drama on the life of Frederick Douglass, The Fifth of July, is being produced by New York City’s Ensemble for the Romantic Century for release in late 2022. Ken is a former news and sports reporter and editor, bad slam poet and worse standup comedian. He was co-host/co-producer of Story Club Boston, a storytelling/reading series. He has been featured on the nationally televised storytelling show, “Stories from the Stage” on PBS
and been a local Moth and Massmouth storytelling finalist.
The Directors:
Courtney O’Connor, director (Blood on the Snow; Cato & Dolly; The Nature Plays; The America Plays; Suffrage in Black & White: A Light Under the Dome)
Courtney O’Connor is the artistic director of the Lyric Stage Company of Boston and is a senior affiliated performing arts faculty member at Emerson College. For Plays in Place she has directed Cato & Dolly, The America Plays, and The Nature Plays. She has directed with many theaters in the Boston area, including Lyric Stage Company of Boston, The Nora Theatre, AIM Stage, Coyote Theatre, Emerson Stage, UMass Boston, Suffolk University, Brandeis University, and Commonwealth Shakespeare Company (intern company). She previously was the Director of Education and Outreach for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director of Coyote Theatre, and Program Director of the Emerson Summer Stage for High School Students. Courtney is a recipient of the Elliot Norton award for Outstanding Direction for her work as the Associate Director on the Lyric Stage’s production of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and the Alan L. Stanzler Award for Excellence in Teaching. Through her work with the Coyote Theatre Project, she oversaw the creation of more than 200 new 10-minute plays written by at-risk youth from Boston. Courtney directed the world premiere and return engagement of Blood on the Snow, a site-specific play about the Boston Massacre for the Bostonian Society in the 300-year-old Old State House. She recently directed a outdoors, site-specific, community based production of Our Town in the Berkshires in which the 100+ members of the audience moved from the front lawn of the community’s church across to the town’s cemetery. She received her bachelor’s in English from Cabrini College and her master’s in theatre education from Emerson College. For more information, please visit www.courtneyoc.com.
Megan Sandberg-Zakian (Moonlight Abolitionists; Suffrage in Black & White: Nothing But Victory!)
Megan Sandberg-Zakian is a theater director focusing on the development of vital new American plays for the stage and the ear. She currently serves as the Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, a home for new works for the stage located on the campus of Boston University. Megan is also an author, educator, and a co-founder of Maia Directors, a consulting group for artists and organizations engaging with stories from the Middle East and beyond. Her first book, There Must Be Happy Endings: On a Theater of Optimism and Honesty is available from The 3rd Thing press. megansz.com
Briana Sloane (The Historic Northampton Plays)
Brianna Sloane (she/her) is a director, actor, maker, and educator based in Western Massachusetts, who is passionate about excavating place-based stories through research-driven devising and development work. She is a co-founder of TheatreTruck, a mother-owned collaborative crafting mobile & site-specific performance, sustainably and playfully. Highlights with TheatreTruck: Co-writer/Director: The Emily Dickinson Project (in the Amherst home of the poet), Deviser/Playwright/Director: The Mill Project, exploring women’s bodies in labor in the age of industrialization. Brianna holds an MFA in Directing (UMass Amherst), BA (Hampshire College), and a certificate for intensive study of physical & mask theatre and Commedia dell’Arte at the Accademia dell’Arte (Arezzo, Italy). She makes work that centers physically awake storytelling and embraces theater as a vehicle for community building.
Alexandra Smith (Revolution’s Edge)
Alexandra Smith (she/her) is a theatre director and producer whose storytelling interests include the ways that humans craft, embody, and resist narratives; the transcendent power of human connection; and ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Director: The Day We Saw Everything and Party Bots (Lyric Back Stage – Lyric Stage Company), Extremities and A Good Death (Also Known As Theatre), Fiddlers Three (The Theater Barn), and Anon(ymous) (Hartford Stage Education). Assistant Director: Lyric Stage, the National Women’s Theatre Festival, Wheelock Family Theatre, and the Huntington. Producer: After We Become Rain (The Dinosaur Factory); My Body No Choice, The Community Write digital engagement series, and An Education In Prudence (Open Theatre Project); In the Forest She Grew Fangs (Also Known As Theatre). Community Programs Manager at Lyric Stage, Producing Director for The Dinosaur Factory, Company Member for Open Theatre Project, Core Collaborator for The Big Times Project, and Board Member for the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund.
Summer L. Williams (Suffrage in Black & White: A New Era.)
Summer L. Williams is an award-winning director and Co-Founder/Associate Artistic Director of Company One Theatre in Boston. Her most recent directing credits include Jump by Charly Evon Simpson at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, MD, can i touch it?, a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere by Francisca Da Silvera at Company One Theatre, sandblasted by Charly Evon Simpson with Vineyard Theatre and WP Theater, Off-Broadway.
Local/Regional credits: The Arboretum Experience at American Repertory Theater (A.R.T), Daddy Issues at Salt Lake City Acting Company New Play Sounding Series, the Digital World Premiere of Downtown Crossing at Company One Theatre, Wolf Play at Company One Theatre, School Girls, or The African Mean Girls Play at SpeakEasy Stage Company, Miss You Like Hell with Company One Theatre and OBERON at American Repertory Theater, the World Premiere of Leftovers at Company One Theatre, Wig Out! with Company One and OBERON at A.R.T.; Smart People at Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, NY and Geva Theater in Rochester, NY; Barbecue at Lyric Stage Company of Boston—Winner of the 2018 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director; Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. at Company One Theatre; Bootycandy at SpeakEasy Stage Company; An Octoroon and Colossal with Company One Theatre—Winner of the 2016 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director for both productions. Intimate Apparel at Lyric Stage Company of Boston; Shiv as a part of The Displaced Hindu Gods Trilogy; Shelter of Last Resort by Miranda Craigwell as a part of XX PlayLab 2014; the New England Premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud To Present A Presentation About The Herero Of Namibia, Formerly Known As Southwest Africa From The German Sudwestafrika Between The Years 1884-1915; Idris Goodwin’s How We Got On; Lynn Nottage’s By The Way, Meet Vera Stark at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston; The Brothers Size and Marcus; Or The Secret Of Sweet as part of The Brother/Sister Plays (2012 Elliot Norton Award nominated for Outstanding Production and winner of the 2012 IRNE Award for Best Play); Neighbors, Grimm; The Good Negro; Voyeurs De Venus (Winner of 2009 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director); The Bluest Eye (IRNE and Elliot Norton Award nominated); The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot; Spell #7 (IRNE nominated); Jesus Hopped The A Train (2004 Elliot Norton Award for Best Fringe Production); and Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 (IRNE nominated).
Pascale Florestal, director (I Am This Place)
Pascale is a lover of new play development working as the Boston Project Coordinator with SpeakEasy Stage 2018-2019. She has also directed several staged readings of new plays by Michael Hisamoto, Marcus Gardley, Obehi Janice, Phaedra Michelle Scott, Greg Lam and others. Recent dramaturgy for Christina Anderson’s play The Resurrection of Michelle Morgan with Geva Theater, Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over with SpeakEasy Stage Co-Produced with The Front Porch Arts Collective and Breathe & Imagination by Daniel Beaty with Lyric Stage Co-Produced with The Front Porch Arts Collective. She is the Education Director and Associate Producer for The Front Porch Arts Collective where she created The Young Critics Program, an educational program that strives to foster and incubate the next generation of arts critics. She is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee College of Music and is the recent recipient of The Greg Ferrell Award for her excellence in teaching and serving young people.
Pascale currently serves as the Associate Director for The National Broadway Tour of Jagged Little Pill. Her recent production of Once On This Island received six Elliot Norton Nomination including Outstanding Direction and Outstanding Musical Production. Upcoming Directing credits: Spring Awakening at Brandeis University, Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury with SpeakEasy Stage and No Child by Nilaja Sun at Kitchen Theater Company