The Birds and the Bees
Plaza Black Box Theatre
Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont Street, Boston
June 2-11, 2016
The Birds and the Bees festival featured Kate Snodgrass’ The Last Bark, Adara Meyers’ Birds, and Charlotte Meehan’s Beesus & Ballustrada, a trio of frighteningly funny, cross-generational plays with apocalyptic undertones. By turns philosophical and psychological, fierce and funny, calamitous and sublime, these plays by women writers upend our everyday view of romantic love. Installation artist Mirta Tocci’s set and costume design thematically joined the trio in a unified visual gesture.
Kate Snodgrass’s The Last Bark (a follow-up to her Badass play, The Tempest (or Bark’s Dream) considers the end of the world and the end of an era, amidst the personal truths that lie beneath those two realities. Directed by Melia Bensussen and performed by Steven Barkhimer and Snodgrass, this play is a tragicomic swirl of splendor and pain in the life of the aging artist.
Adara Meyers’ Birds follows Toby, a young man embarking on a quest to become the perfect citizen, activist, and boyfriend by placing himself in the hands of Neil, a sadistic charlatan masquerading as a self-help guru. Directed by Shana Gozansky, absurdist humor and shards of light give way to the play’s critique of our politically, culturally, and environmentally fractured world. Performed by Alexander Rankine, Steven Barkhimer, Julia Alvarez, Louise Hamill, Mara Elissa Palma, and Sam Terry.
Charlotte Meehan’s Beesus & Ballustrada, a post-apocalyptic tragicomedy set in a Brooklyn forest, finds two nearly feral lovers weaving their way in and out of battle, need, and ecstasy. Directed by Melia Bensussen, with tender and vicious performances by Karen MacDonald and Cliff Odle.
Preview
“Sleeping Weazel, one of Boston’s smartest and most daring small theater companies, is prepared to rock theater goers with a triple bill of short plays by Boston area female playwrights.”
~ Triple Bill Theater: Sleeping Weazel Presents The Birds and the Bees
(Interview with Kilian Melloy, Edge Media Network)
Reviews
“Looking for theater that’s going to take you to impossible places and ask you questions that will chase through your head instead of lying there panting and looking bored? This is the place to be!”
~ Kilian Melloy, Edge Media Network
“I could listen to Karen MacDonald read the phonebook. It would be weird but she’d make it good theatre. Her Ballustrada hasn’t ‘a squirrel to her name’ but she doesn’t need one. She’s fine on her own. Cliff Odle’s Beesus is more than just a ‘mild entertainment.’ They both deliver compelling, strikingly endearing performances.”
~ Kitty Drexel, New England Theatre Geek
“ . . It’s a great take for those who like their theater a little more on the adventurous side.”
~ Mike Hoban, Boston Events Insider
