Past Work
What’s past is prologue. Over the past two years, Underlings has grown from an impromptu collective of fringe theater performers to a fringe company with an important presence in the Boston community. Learn more about our past work below, and join us as we continue to grow!
Season One
Ada, Soon
A new play on artificial intelligence & the apocalypse, interwoven with The Tempest.
Written and directed by Lelaina Vogel
Premiered in Boston after a successful run at the Providence Fringe Festival
September 8 and 9, 2017
The Space Studio at Auspicious Phoenix
438 Somerville Ave, Somerville, MA
Season One Reading Series
Underlings followed its first production with a reading series at the Arts at the Armory in Somerville. We had the delight of presenting three original plays by Boston-area playwrights.
The Earth Room
by Marge Buckley
directed by Sarah Batista-Pereira
George and Jitterbug raise their two daughters on Mars, replacing Earth with a perfect VR simulation.
The Uninvited Guest
by Maryanne Truax
directed by Lelaina Vogel
A classic dinner party farce with love triangles, surprises, and lobster bisque galore.
Fruit in Winter
by Emily Helen Atkinson
directed by Peter V. Secrest
A contemporary retelling of Doctor Faustus, imagining Faust as we all do: a queer feminist grad student.
November 15, November 29, and December 13, 2017
Arts at the Armory Cafe, 191 Highland Ave, Somerville, MA
Romeo & Juliet
Underlings presented this classic tale of star-crossed lovers divided by their families' hatred with two special twists. The show was performed in its original pronunciation, a recreation of the dialect Shakespeare and his contemporaries used. We set the action in a 1980s high school, inspired by films like Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Heathers.
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Lelaina Vogel
Text and Dialect Coaching by Daniel Blackwell
February 23rd through March 3rd, 2018
The Blackbox at the Chelsea Theatre Works
189 Winnisimmet Street, Chelsea, MA
The Tour
A guide and a pilgrim visit ancient ruins days before ISIS marches through.
Each has a secret that will put the other in danger.
Written by Alice Abracen
Directed by Lelaina Vogel
May 4th through May 12th, 2018
The Blackbox Theatre at the Chelsea Theatre Works
189 Winnisimmet Street, Chelsea, MA
Season Two: False Faces / False Hearts
A community reels when a member falls in with a group of extremists—then takes action on his new friends’ dangerous ideals.
Two faithful subjects take their country’s fate into their own hands—by killing the king.
In a tilting world where fact is fiction and power can be taken in the dark of night, Underlings brings the all new Alice Abracen play What Rough Beast and Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the Boston area for a thrilling second season: FALSE FACES/FALSE HEARTS.
The Tour
Off popular demand, Underlings remounted our first production of The Tour in a new space.
A guide and a pilgrim visit ancient ruins days before ISIS marches through.
Each has a secret that will put the other in danger.
Written by Alice Abracen
Directed by Lelaina Vogel
September 13 & 14, 2018 at 8PM
September 15, 2018 at 7PM & 9PM
The Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts, Watertown
What Rough Beast
A controversial professor is invited to speak at a progressive college, fracturing the student body along personal and political fault lines. But when one of their own acts on the speaker’s extremist ideals, those cracks become canyons that will change lives forever.
Written by Alice Abracen
Directed by Lelaina Vogel
January 11 through 19, 2019
at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
Macbeth
One night, some kids went into the woods with a camera …
When morning came, the camera was all that was left of them.
Inspired by The Blair Witch Project and other contemporary found-footage horror movies, this Shakespearean tale of horror, ambition, and the lengths we'll go for power gained a terrifyingly modern edge, as director Daniel Thomas Blackwell spun a tale fit for telling around the campfire.
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Daniel Thomas Blackwell
April 5-13, 2019
The Mosesian Center for the Arts Blackbox
Watertown, MA