BU Plays a Big Role in New Production from Boston’s Company One Theatre
BU Plays a Big Role in New Production from Boston’s Company One Theatre
Morning, Noon, and Night, written by BU’s Kirsten Greenidge and featuring a BU sophomore, is a joint production with the College of Fine Arts
Schanaya Barrows as Chloe (from left), Sydney Jackson (CFA’26) as Dailyn, and Asilinn Brophy as Nat in Kirsten Greenidge’s Morning, Noon, and Night, a Company One production with Boston University. Photo by Ken Yotsukura
This article was originally published in BU Today on April 29, 2024.
There’s a big role for Boston University in the new production by Boston’s Company One Theatre. Several of them, actually. The play is Morning, Noon, and Night,written by Kirsten Greenidge, a College of Fine Arts associate professor of playwriting, who will take over as director of the CFA School of Theatre this summer. Produced with CFA, the show is receiving its world premiere and runs through May 25 at the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatres. Greenidge has long been connected with Company One (C1), which has produced six other world premieres of her work; currently she is playwright-in-residence with the troupe.
“It feels like we’ve grown up together in a lot of ways,” says Summer L. Williams, C1 cofounder and associate artistic director, who is directing Morning, Noon, and Night. “Kirsten and her career as the prolific writer that she is, and us as this sort of scrappy little theater company with a lot to say. Kind of working our way up the ranks to say and do some things differently in the city of Boston.”
“I think quite honestly we have changed the shape of Boston theater. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m being prideful,” Williams says, “because I’m not.”
“When I first got together with Company One,” Greenidge says, “the groundwork for that social justice work and attention to community, and how arts can uplift community and be integrated in community, was definitely there. That’s definitely part of why I’ve stuck around.”
The BU connections on Morning, Noon, and Night continue with actors Sydney Jackson (CFA’26) and Eliza Fichter (CFA’13).
“Young actors from BU have figured out how to manage their BU hustle, that school grind—you know that’s a difficult track,” Williams says. “Maybe there’s something about the BU training, that they’re, like, springy on their toes. They’re just ready to try, you know?”
Jackson says Williams is right about the challenge of tackling school and an outside professional production simultaneously: “It’s definitely the logistics and the balance of it all and getting everything done at once.” But being able to connect these two worlds of school and profession has been especially satisfying, she says, because she can talk to her professors and the rest of her School of Theatre circle about the work.
“To carve a path for someone’s first steps into professional theater—I delight in that experience,” Williams says. “I feel really lovely knowing that there are some people who’ve had a lovely, soft, healthy, professional theater landing with us, by way of a partnership, a conversation between BU and Company One.”
An exploration of family, with a supernatural twist
“It’s incredible the way her mind works,” Williams says of Greenidge. “The only way I can describe it is, Inception-level thinking. You know, there are four layers that are all operating at once.”
Morning, Noon, and Night follows teenager Dailyn (played by Jackson) and her mother Mia (Kaili Y. Turner) as they try to get along and prepare for the return of Dailyn’s older sister Alex, who’s coming home for her birthday. But in a post-COVID world where social media often has the upper hand, no one should be surprised that there’s a mysterious visitor from the digital world who’ll shake up everything…
“Like many of us, I spent a lot of time on social media in the last few years,” Greenidge says, “and I got very interested in families where a member has gone no contact. No matter how bad things get with my sisters, I can’t imagine what that would be like. To be like, I cannot talk with you anymore. That got me interested, in terms of what would make someone make that choice.
“The supernatural science fiction angle at the end is going to challenge the production capabilities,” she adds with a smile. “We’re gonna have some fun with that.”
Jackson relates to her character in more ways than one.
“Dailyn is full of energy, and with her mom, it’s like a fight to understand each other, and they’re really struggling to connect,” she says. “Throughout this play and throughout this one day, Dailyn is finally unraveling and opening up and she truly is finally being able to be seen. All she really wants is to be heard and understood.
“I definitely think being closer to the age in the role is an amazing opportunity because I’m so close to it, and because I have these personal experiences I can join and I totally understand the dynamic of them.”
Jackson loves Greenidge’s work, having seen several of her plays while at CFA, she says, but her admiration for the playwright goes back even earlier. When it came time for her audition for applying to the School of Theatre, she selected a monologue from Greenidge’s Milk Like Sugar, not knowing that Greenidge was on the BU faculty.
“To carve a path for someone’s first steps into professional theater—I delight in that experience. I feel really lovely knowing that there are some people who’ve had a lovely, soft, healthy, professional theater landing with us, by way of a partnership, a conversation between BU and Company One.
“I’ve seen her plays, her completed plays, but being able to be in the room where it happens…” Jackson says, shaking her head. “The words matter so much. The other day we got new pages and I was reviewing them last night, and I was like, this [change] means so much to my character. These new words mean the world.”
In the history of Boston theater, it’s not exactly every day that a Black woman actor works with a Black woman director to bring to life the words of a Black woman playwright.
“I’m just so grateful to be in that room,” Jackson says. “I think the best thing about it has been the space that has been created. It has just been amazing to be in this rehearsal process in this welcoming and encouraging and loving space.”
Still more BU connections
Other current BU students and alums associated with the production include co-dramaturg Elena Morris (CFA’18), sound designer Aubrey Dube (CFA’18), and audio engineer Logan Puleikis (CAS’20, SPH’25, SSW’25). C1 dramaturg Ilana Brownstein taught at the School of Theatre. And Sapphire Skye Toth (MET’24), the C1 production manager overseeing all of the company’s shows, is a student in Metropolitan College’s arts administration program.
Oh, and one more—CFA Dean Harvey Young recently joined C1’s board. He notes that C1 has emerged as a leader in creating economically accessible theater. Every production is free or “pay what you want.”
“It is an honor to partner with an organization with a similarly deep commitment to inclusion,” Young says, “and to join in the good work of removing barriers to access within the theater.”
About Morning, Noon, and Night, he says, “Kirsten Greenidge is one of our country’s exceptionally gifted playwrights. We’re fortunate that she chooses to premiere many of her new works in our city. To coproduce this world premiere and to help expand the reach of Kirsten’s powerful dramatic storytelling voice is a privilege.”
“It just makes a lot of sense,” Williams says of C1’s collaboration with the University. “Given the amount of artists that we’ve worked with who’ve come through BU, and we have a long history of those connections, it’s a natural fit that we are walking down this road together. Particularly walking down this road together on a Kirsten piece.”
While BU and C1 haven’t sketched out what form further collaborations might take, both are hopeful the relationship will continue to develop. It’s just one of many new avenues worth pursuing at a difficult time for nonprofit theater.
“Harvey is a man who is not short of ideas and energy,” Williams says. “And we [C1] have been in this game for 25 years, constantly looking to do something bigger, better, stronger. And so this feels like an opportunity for us to figure out some new ways to do that, right? And also think about a healthy ecology, for our creative space, right? Our creative ecosystem got hit [by COVID], and so, what do we do to rebuild that?”