By Rosalind Beauchemin
The curtain is going up this fall on an exciting new partnership for Suffolk’s Theatre Department. For its 2023–24 season, the department is partnering with Boston’s award-winning Front Porch Arts Collective, a Black theater company founded in 2017 to advance racial equity.
As part of this collaboration, Pascale Florestal, Front Porch’s education director and associate producer, is joining the Suffolk faculty as a visiting guest artist and professor. In addition to teaching a scene study and directing course, she will direct the fall main stage show at Suffolk's Modern Theatre, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Students will collaborate with her on the production, which will include the play’s original themes and familiar characters seen through a contemporary lens with modern-day language. “We’ll have our own fun creating it,” Florestal says.
General Manager Jim Bernhardt says the Theatre Department was eager to work with Florestal and Front Porch for several reasons. “We have the utmost admiration, respect, and affection not only for what they are doing but for who they are as people and artists,” he says. “Front Porch have made their mark collaborating with other companies in the Boston area, and we’re very proud to have been a part of their first self-produced piece, Chicken & Biscuits.” Produced at the Modern Theatre, that comedy was named Outstanding Play, Small Theater by the Boston Theater Critics Association at the 2023 Elliot Norton Awards.
For her part, Florestal says she’s eager to expand the Front Porch community.
“With or without the awards, this work is important,” she says. “The things that we bring to the city are so needed, and it’s a reminder that this community really values us. It’s just more of a reason for us to continue to create the work that we know is important to our community here.”
In March, Florestal will oversee the Boston premiere of Dave Harris’ Exception to the Rule at the Modern Theatre. Directed by Donovan Holt, the play focuses on six Black students stuck in detention in the worst high school in the city as they try to make it through—fighting, flirting, and teasing. The production is the result of the Front Porch Reading Series and is a first-of-its-kind partnership between Front Porch, Suffolk, and Northeastern University.
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Photograph courtesy of Front Porch Arts Collective, Michael J. Clarke
noteworthy
Front Porch staged its award-winning production of Chicken & Biscuits (top) at Suffolk; this fall, director Pascale Florestal joined the Theatre Department as a visiting guest artist and professor.
The curtain is going up this fall on an exciting new partnership for Suffolk’s Theatre Department. For its 2023–24 season, the department is partnering with Boston’s award-winning Front Porch Arts Collective, a Black theater company founded in 2017 to advance racial equity.
As part of this collaboration, Pascale Florestal, Front Porch’s education director and associate producer, is joining the Suffolk faculty as a visiting guest artist and professor. In addition to teaching a scene study and directing course, she will direct the fall main stage show at Suffolk's Modern Theatre, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Students will collaborate with her on the production, which will include the play’s original themes and familiar characters seen through a contemporary lens with modern-day language. “We’ll have our own fun creating it,” Florestal says.
General Manager Jim Bernhardt says the Theatre Department was eager to work with Florestal and Front Porch for several reasons. “We have the utmost admiration, respect, and affection not only for what they are doing but for who they are as people and artists,” he says. “Front Porch have made their mark collaborating with other companies in the Boston area, and we’re very proud to have been a part of their first self-produced piece, Chicken & Biscuits.” Produced at the Modern Theatre, that comedy was named Outstanding Play, Small Theater by the Boston Theater Critics Association at the 2023 Elliot Norton Awards.
For her part, Florestal says she’s eager to expand the Front Porch community.
“With or without the awards, this work is important,” she says. “The things that we bring to the city are so needed, and it’s a reminder that this community really values us. It’s just more of a reason for us to continue to create the work that we know is important to our community here.”
In March, Florestal will oversee the Boston premiere of Dave Harris’ Exception to the Rule at the Modern Theatre. Directed by Donovan Holt, the play focuses on six Black students stuck in detention in the worst high school in the city as they try to make it through—fighting, flirting, and teasing. The production is the result of the Front Porch Reading Series and is a first-of-its-kind partnership between Front Porch, Suffolk, and Northeastern University.