Dirty Rotten Scoundrels follows the misadventures of two con-artists: Freddy Benson and Lawrence Jameson. Freddy is just one more hardscrabble huckster trying to make a (dis)honest living – that is, until he meets Lawrence, a high-society swindler whose polish and connections have landed him a glamorous gig on the French Riviera.

When Lawrence invites Freddy to team up, it seems like the two have finally found the perfect con – until they realize that their egos are the only thing more massive than their earnings. Friction turns to an outright feud when the perfect target arrives in town – Christine, an heiress who is just as beautiful as she is gullible. Who will be the first to steal Christine’s heart and, more importantly, her wallet? Grab a sunhat and a cold drink for a musical that will keep you grinning and guessing from start to finish.

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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Harvard University

After escaping a dangerous past in Minnesota, Jane finds herself in a small seaside town where she meets Beckett and Moe.  Moe owns the Inn where Jane finds a room to rent and where Beckett, her partner also lives. But Beckett is experiencing the early stages of dementia and she and Moe are about to discover the cost of keeping a secret, even when it’s done with the best intentions. Moe, Beckett and Jane are all about to face the same inevitable question: what is worth remembering when the past is too painful to hold on to? State of Maine wrestles with the truth, challenges and beauty of letting go and starting over.

State of Maine

Calderwood Pavilion

What happens when an “innocent” picture with your favorite teacher turns into the biggest scandal the school has ever seen? In the girls’ bathroom of a nondescript suburban high school, five teenagers are forced to reckon with their past as it begins to bleed into what they hope for their future. Narrated by a teenage Greek chorus, Meet Me in the Bathroom gets at the heart of what it means to be a teenager and watch everything you’ve known fall apart around you.

Meet Me in the Bathroom

Baltimore -1932. Bithiah and J.J. Johnston are quietly surviving the Great Depression, while doing what they can for their neighbors. Fifty-miles south, in the nation’s capital, the world is about to explode. When J.J.’s fellow “doughboys” arrive, in search of someone to lead the fight against a government that’s left the veterans of The Great War and their families to perish, the smell of former glory intoxicates J.J and threatens to derail what little his family has. J.J. must decide what fight is truly his to win and what is worth the risk, should he lose.

Fall With Me

A throne of red Solo cups, a pile of teeth, the ghost of Pete Seeger, and a little something for dinner. It’s 2030, and it’s illegal to be a billionaire. Jeffrey Bezos has agreed to give an interview in exchange for information on the federal case against him. But there’s something off about journalist Cherry Beaumont, a crowd is forming outside, and the onstage Fact Checker has a few important clarifications to make. In this near-future fairy tale, the fall of capitalism is about to get very messy.

How to Not Save the World with Mr. Bezos

On the eve of a highly anticipated grand opening of a beloved yet politically controversial fast-food empire, one hundred fervent devotees gather in the parking lot for an overnight campout to earn a year of free large combos. As the night unfolds, it’s clear there’s a fox in the chicken coop. Jade, the newly appointed store manager, must find the source of anarchy before the flock devolves into utter chaos. HOLY CHICKEN SANDWICH is a comedic mystery of celestial proportions that explores themes of identity, consumerism, and division––a play that invites audiences to examine indoctrination and uncover what’s really in the secret sauce of devotion.

Holy Chicken Sandwich

How do we become entrenched in the beliefs we hold, and what – if anything – can get us to walk away when those beliefs lead to chaos and destruction?  Jordan’s mission to infiltrate and report on an apocalyptic religious community has ended in disaster. Questions from an unseen interrogator trigger and inform Jordan’s memories of her time undercover, forcing her to confront the effects of the choices she’s made and decide whether the beliefs that guided her are any less destructive than the beliefs of those in the group.

Covenant

Once Upon a Carnival is an original musical set in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad & Tobago. When 16-year-old Bhavan is forced to move from New York City to his mother’s home country of Trinidad after his father’s death, he is faced with the task of overcoming grief and accepting his identity through a magical quest in the mythological bush land. Set to a vibrant score infused with chutney, soca and calypso sounds, Bhavan’s adventure will test his and the audience’s notions of grief, identity and found family while exploring the magical world of Trinidad at Carnival time.

Once Upon a Carnival

Developers want to tear down Antoine’s, Boston’s only drag bar, in order to build some high-rise condos. Zonna, who has been performing at the club for 2/3 of her life, has other ideas. After being visited by the ghost of her drag mother Crystal Crawford, Zonna bands together with her drag queen sisters Ivanka (the club’s 70 year old bartender and former chanteuse), Mx (a gender fluid college kid) and Sharia Law (a hardscrabble queen who has fought for everything she’s got) and stages a “drag in”, where they will live in the club to protest its demolition, while fending off their neighbor, Mrs. Chao (an 80 year old Chinese woman who is on a permanent neighborhood watch), as well as the gentrification of the neighborhood they all love.

Knock Down, Drag Out

Welcome back to YEAR 3 of The Boston New Works Festival!  The Festival is Boston’s stomping grounds for fully produced NEW WORKS by LOCAL Playwrights, performed by LOCAL Artists, celebrating LOCAL audiences.  Come see a new show, or see them all!  Years 1 & 2 featured over 12 WORLD PREMIERES.  Join us this June campus-wide at the Boston Center for the Arts and the Calderwood Pavilion for Boston New Works Festival 2024!

Boston New Works Festival 2024

For Pilar and Bird, parenting a trans tween is all about guessing how to get it right when they’re not even sure what that means—and it doesn’t help that they’re not on the same page. Vi just wishes they would keep up: she’s busy navigating her first crush on super-cool Jacob, obsessing over her favorite YouTube vlogger, and just about ready to make herself an internet sensation. Fast-paced, funny, and heartfelt, The Mermaid Hour finds all three confronting the gaps between who they are and who they wish to be.

Mermaid Hour

THE MANIC MONOLOGUES is a play showcasing true stories of mental illness to disrupt stigma. It has shown in-person to thousands of people across four continents, and has been featured by the Washington Post, NPR, Psychology Today, NYT, Broadway World, and many more. Manic Monologues brings to life incredible stories — stories that will challenge and inform your ideas about what it means to be touched by a mental health condition. These true, lived experiences come from diverse and resilient people living across the world. These brave individuals have things to say about struggle and pain, but also triumph and joy. They are moving. They are human. And they are not ashamed.

The Manic Monologues

Legally Blonde: The Musical, with music and lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin and a book by Heather Hach, based on the novel Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown, chronicles the journey of the famously perky Elle Woods, a fashion-savvy, UCLA sorority girl who finds her life turned upside down when she is dumped by her boyfriend Warner. In an effort to prove to Warner that she is more than just some blonde sorority girl, she follows him to Harvard Law School, where she struggles to fit in and do well. Ultimately, she defies expectations and manages to stay true to her delightfully pink personality.

Legally Blonde: The Musical

A Brechtian take on a Sondheim classic. After being wrongfully imprisoned by the corrupt justice system, Sweeney Todd returns home to London to seek his revenge and save his daughter, Johanna. Aided by his meat-pie baking neighbor Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney comes to a much darker conclusion – we all deserve to die. Witness Moonbox’s new take on the modern myth, the parable of power, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Sweeney Todd

To wrap up its season, Moonbox looks forward to bringing its 2nd Annual Boston New Works Festival to the Calderwood Pavilion and the Boston Center for the Arts during the summer of 2023.

2nd Annual Boston New Works Festival

Isn’t it time we rethink Thanksgiving?  That’s the question on the table when four politically correct performers get together to create a new take on the traditional holiday pageant.  Good intentions turn into outright tension as the group struggles to re-envision history, all without ruffling any feathers.  Rambunctious, wild, and fearless, The Thanksgiving Play serves up history and humor with a steaming side dish of uniquely American hypocrisy.  Are you ready to eat your words?

The Thanksgiving Play

A moving and celebratory musical play in which hats become a springboard for an exploration of Black history and identity as seen through the eyes of a young Black woman who has come down South to stay with her aunt after her brother is killed in Brooklyn. Hats are everywhere, in exquisite variety, and the characters use the hats to tell tales concerning everything from the etiquette of hats to their historical and contemporary social function. There is a hat for every occasion, from flirting to churchgoing to funerals to baptisms, and the tradition of hats is traced back to African rituals and slavery and forward to the New Testament and current fashion. Some rap but predominantly gospel music and dance underscore and support the narratives. The conclusion finds the standoffish young woman, whose cultural identity as a young Black Brooklyn woman has been so at odds with the more traditional and older Southern Blacks, embrace hats and their cultural significance as a part of her own fiercely independent identity.

Moonbox Productions

Nov 21 - Dec 15, 2024

The Thanksgiving Play

Apr 11 - May 4, 2025

Crowns

Sep 27 - Oct 20, 2024

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

20 - 23 Jun, 2024

State of Maine

Moonbox Productions