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)
Patrick has been telling stories on stage for more than 30 years. His early work writing and producing site-specific work began with the Chameleon Stage theatre company 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 in 2016 and 2017, and Both/And, a play about quantum entanglement, for the Central Square Theater and the MIT Museum, which played at the MIT Museum in 2017 and 2018. Patrick wrote and produced Cato & Dolly for The Bostonian Society, which was part of their Through the Keyhole exhibit around unheard voices from American history and the door from the Hancock Mansion in 2018 and 2019. In addition, he 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 and appear in various anthologies.
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 Submission Binge. He also writes novels, screenplays, and audio plays. In his spare time, he likes to garden and fix up old houses. You can read more on Patrick and his work at www.gabridge.com.
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:
Courtney O’Connor, director (Blood on the Snow, Cato & Dolly, The Nature Plays, The America Plays, Suffrage in Black & White)
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.
Miranda Austen ADEkoje, playwright (I Am This Place and Suffrage in Black & White)
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, playwright (Suffrage in Black & White)
Ginger Lazarus 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.