Presented by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
949 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Parking & Directions

The Fig Tree, and The Phoenix, and The Desire to be Reborn 
February 20 – March 9 on the Snodgrass Stage
By Isabelle Fereshteh Sanatdar Stevens
Directed by Nikta Sabouri
Original Music and Sound Designer: Arshan Gailus
Digital playbill 

The Recursion of a Moth 
February 27 – March 9 on the Snodgrass Stage
By Brandon Zang
Directed by Katie Brook
Digital playbill 

Critique by Kitty Drexel

BOSTON — This Spring, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents two new plays as part of its repertory season: Isabelle Fereshteh Sanatdar Stevens’ The Fig Tree, and The Phoenix, and The Desire to be Reborn and Brandon Zang’s The Recursion of a Moth. Fig adapts an Iranian/Zoroastrian creation myth into a fantasy parable. Moth explains time recursion (a physics term for time looping back in itself… I think.) via an expanded family social experiment.  Both trace love across oceans of time. 

The cast. Photo: Benjamin Rose Photography

The Fig Tree, and The Phoenix, and The Desire to be Reborn
Attended on March 1, 2 PM

In the Iranian province of Zanjan, in an orchard where all of the trees have gone to sleep, one remains ripe with fruit. Underneath its fig-studded branches, on the chilliest August night of 1988, eight-year-olds Mandana (Minou Pourshariati) and Javeed (Danny Bryck) meet for the first time— Except, it doesn’t feel like the first time. A story of what the world has been, what it is now, and what it could be.

The best parts of The Fig Tree, and The Phoenix, and The Desire to be Reborn channel the Star Wars and the clown arts. To me, the lore and world-building of this decade’s Star Wars come the closest to a modern fairytale that the U.S. has. The circus arts require discipline, athletic ability, and artistic sensitivity. Fig Tree makes space for both. Pourshariati and Bryck are equal parts spontaneous and severe in their roles. 

While this play introduces its roots in Iranian folklore immediately, it takes too long to establish its characters’ location and identities. We know its message is important – Director Sabouri establishes a virtuous atmosphere in the first scene – but we don’t know why. Then, it takes precious minutes for the audience to determine where the actors are and what they’re doing. We don’t grasp what the actors are saying until long after they’ve said it. We want to listen and understand, and we will if we’re given the clues to do so. 

The transition from the first scene to the next doesn’t work. Lights to black and the long wait between scenes disconnect the audience from the play. But, watching the actors unfurl the gorgeous fig tree backdrop by Courtney Licata, Cleo Brooks and Amir Tabatabaei before taking their places on it does work. It tells the audience, in Western theatre language it understands, that it is about to see a play. We like plays, so we pay attention. 

If you’re going to make your craft transparent, you might as well make the other parts transparent, too. Do costume changes onstage. Keep the actors on stage during transitions or give them expansive staging. It’s your reality; do what you want, but keep it consistent. The audience will follow you if you lead them. Fig Tree has the potential to transport audiences to other realms, but only if its audience is involved from the very beginning.   

The cast. Scornavacca Photography

The Recursion of a Moth
Attended on March 2, 2 PM

Summary via BPT: Icarus (Alexander Holden) and Mikey (Jaime Jose Hernandez) time travel. Icarus and Mikey fall out of love. Icarus and Mikey meet each other for the first time on the job interview. Somewhere else, some time else, Chrys (Jenny S. Lee) buys a yellow house that isn’t in Denver, CO. Time travel has two rules: You can travel to any timeline as long as you don’t change anything. There’s always someone who thinks the rules don’t apply to them.

The best science fiction easily translates scientific jargon into clear, simple language anyone can understand. Playwright Brandon Zang takes an earnest stab at this in his play The Recursion of a Moth. He gives us a layperson’s definition of his universe’s rules via a physics lecture charismatically delivered by Lee to explain time travel within the story. Zang’s showing by telling. He kindly assumes we will grasp the mathematical principles behind time travel. That’s sweet of him. I, an artist who knows enough to know she knows nothing, got lost almost immediately. 

This is the trap of science fiction theatre: knowing how much explanation is enough. Explain too much, and the audience feels patronized. Explain too little, and the audience can’t escape into their entertainment. Zang’s script needs some tweaking but has almost accomplished a respectable balance for an early draft. 

The staging of and actors’ use of sleight of hand to portray time travel activation is slick. Director Brook and prop designer Courtney Licata achieved a sophisticated effect with mini-flashlights that looked like it was taken from a film. Very cool. 

Speaking of which, the romantic goodbye scene between Icarus and Mikey right before the Reset runs too long. Between the urgent staging/acting telling the audience the characters have only a few moments left, the actors hunching their shoulders to show their intense sincerity (the higher the shoulders, the more intense the sincerity), and the dialogue that runs on and on, the fragile sense of urgency intended in this moment flops. Are these lovers getting erased by a time reset or not? The scene drags and the moment feels insincere.  

Looking up recursion on my own as a refresher for this article sent me down a physics rabbit hole down which I had neither the time nor the inclination to descend. But, it looked like the theoretical physicists in the audience understood Zang’s explanation. I wanted to understand too but got distracted by Bernice the motorized tiger moth prop brought to us by Licata. Bernice was prettily iridescent, realistic, and cleverly devised. Just like this play. It’s getting there. 

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