BRYN BOICE
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Bryn Boice
​Theatrical Director


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Last Night at Bowl-Mor Lanes 
by Weylin Symes
Greater Boston Stage Company
2019

Scenic Design: James J. Fenton
Lighting Design: Jeff Adelberg
Sound Design: David Wilson
Costume Design: Becca Jewett
Properties: Emme Shaw
Assistant Director: Stephen Zubricki 
Photos: Nile Scott Shots
If you saw Actors Shakespeare Project’s all-female “Julius Caesar,” O.W.I.’s lamentably-neglected “Red Velvet,” or her Norton Award-winning turn for Commonwealth Shakespeare with two Caryl Churchill one-acts, you recognize director Bryn Boice’s talent, and she mines the humor, the love and the longing of the piece and allows the warmth of the characters to  shine through."
--Rich Fahey, On Boston Stages

...[E]ven a casual bowler can see that Symes, director Bryn Boice, and scenic designer James J. Fenton have gotten the atmospherics right. Fenton’s set is a spot-on simulacrum of a stuck-in-the-1950s bowling alley, from the jukebox in the corner to the overhead “Bowl-Mor’’ sign with the “M’’ dangling upside-down to the row of multicolored bowling balls lined up on a rack.
Boice also got the casting of the leads right: Ruth and Maude are played by Nancy E. Carroll and Paula Plum, twin treasures of Boston theater who long ago earned, and still deserve, the adjective 'inimitable'."
--Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe

The soon-to-be-razed bowling alley of the title is authentically rendered by scenic designer James J. Fenton, and definitely one of the top three reasons to recommend the production. The other two are the grande dames of Boston theater, Nancy E. Carroll and Paula Plum, who take on the characters created by Symes to pay homage to women 'of a certain age.'...Director Bryn Boice draws crisp performances from the cohesive cast and keeps the ball rolling (sorry!) apace, making the game feel like it's happening in real time."
--Nancy Grossman, 
Broadway World
Audience members are immediately thrust into a sense of place with James J. Fenton’s incredible set...[so] ingenious is its construction that the actresses – wait for it – actually bowl during the course of the 90-minute piece, no easy feat...Plum and Carroll shine in their roles, and with each other...Director Boice keeps the action flowing."
--Michele Markarian, Theatre Mirror

Universe Rushing Apart: 
Blue Kettle & Here We Go
two one-act plays
by Caryl Churchill 
Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.
2018

ELLIOT NORTON AWARD for
Outstanding Director, Large Theater

TOP TEN of 2018: The Boston Globe & StageSource
​
​
Scenic Design: Cristina Todesco
Lighting Design: Jen Rock
Sound Design: Dewey Dellay
Costume Design: Nancy Leary
Properties: Sally Tomasetti
Assistant Director: Courtney Plati
Photos by Evgenia Eliseeva
Director Bryn Boice expertly envelops us in a very Churchillian mood — a kind of spell, really — in the rewardingly disconcerting double bill of “Blue Kettle’’ and “Here We Go.’’ The same five actors appear in both plays in this Commonwealth Shakespeare Company production, presented at Babson College’s Sorenson Center for the Arts. Boice draws finely calibrated performances from the entire quintet, who range from Boston theater luminaries Karen MacDonald and Maureen Keiller to Ryan Winkles (a fixture at Lenox’s Shakespeare & Company) to Sarah Mass and Siobhan Carroll.
...Finally comes a devastating scene of an extremely old or sick man being helped to get dressed and undressed by a caregiver. Director Boice boldly pushes the scene to the breaking point. As the wrenching, utterly human sequence repeats over and over again, not a word is spoken, and not a word is needed."

--Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe
...[T]ender and exhilarating...Boice stages the two plays on an almost bare stage where ensemble members dressed in scrubs scoot white Styrofoam set pieces into different arrangements. Sound designer Dewey Dellay’s score — which ranges from the anxious to the magisterial but is never overwhelming — provides an emotional barometer, as an excellent ensemble of five goes through the absurdist motions of the plays, supplying both ironic commentary and genuine emotion that the linguistic trickery might in lesser hands obscure."
--Carolyn Clay, WBUR 
...beautifully acted...Bryn Boice, the director, shows a deep understanding of the two plays."
--Jane Baldwin, Capital Critics Circle: "A First Rate Revival of Two of Caryl Churchill's Plays"
This was a year when women, prominently including women of color, directed a hefty percentage of the impactful stage productions that are likely to linger in the memory as we head into 2019.
This year, it was female directors, as often as not, who embraced challenging subject matter or took chances with form. For example, in Bryn Boice’s Commonwealth Shakespeare Company staging of “Universe Rushing Apart: Blue Kettle and Here We Go,’’ a pair of one-act plays by Caryl Churchill about deceit, identity, language, and mortality, Boice kept spectators off-balance by enveloping them in a hypnotic, vaguely disquieting aura throughout."
--excerpt from Don Aucoin's Boston Globe feature: "Female Directors Provoked and Excelled in Leading Roles"
REHEARSAL & PREVIEW VIDEO
INTERVIEW/PREVIEW FOR WICKED LOCAL

Henry VI part 2 
​
by William Shakespeare
Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.
​Apprentice Company
Boston and Tour, Summer 2018

Scenic and Costume Design: Brooke Stanton
Violence Design: Matt Dray
​Sound Design: Bryn Boice
Properties: Sophie Garner
Photos by Nile Scott Studios

Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti
O.W.I. (Bureau of Theatre)
BCA Plaza Theatre, Spring 2018

Scenic Design: James J. Fenton
​Lighting Design: Alex Fetchko
Costume Design: Becca Jewett
Sound Design: Angelica Alvarez
Props Design: Linda McConchie
Assistant Director/Dramaturg/Fight Director: Jessica Scout Malone
Photos by M.L. Flowers Chavez, James J. Fenton and OWI Theatre
Anthem Theatre Company artistic director Bryn Boice is bringing the same poignant immediacy to Aldridge's singular odyssey that distinguished her all-female edition of "Julius Caesar" for Actors' Shakespeare Company last year.
...Ultimately, "Red Velvet" stands as a clarion call to courage...Director Boice has captured the elegant look of the proceedings that smartly complements Aldridge's personal majesty and yet contrasts with the ugly prejudice often challenging the determined actor. Credit goes to James Fenton's vivid backstage design, Becca Jewett's fine period costumes and Alexander Fetchko's nuanced lighting. Seth Hill captures Aldridge's strength of will and purpose in his body language as well as in his speech."
–Jules Becker, South End News
[Producer] Riesenberg and Director Bryn Boice have assembled a crackerjack team of actors and designers to give full voice to Lolita Chakrabarti’s piece...Boice showed her skills with an ensemble piece in her all-female “Julius Caesar” at Actors Shakespeare Project earlier in the season, and this is another fine effort and another milestone for OWI in its development as a troupe."
–Rich Fahey, On Boston Stages
Excellent production...Highly recommended."
–Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe (via Twitter)

Julius Caesar
Actors' Shakespeare Project
​Boston, Winter 2017
Featuring Marianna Bassham (IRNE and Elliot Norton Nominations for Marc Antony), Bobbie Steinbach (Elliot Norton Nomination for Cassius), Marya Lowry as Brutus, MaConnia Chesser as Casca, among others.

Scenic Design: Cristina Todesco
Lighting Design: Jen Rock
Costume Design: Rebecca Jewett
Sound Design: Amy Altadonna
Props Design: Abby Shenker
Fight Choreography: Lauren Squier
Movement: Bryn Boice
Photos: Maggie Hall for Nile Scott Shots
Call this “Julius Caesar” a gender-bending experiment if you like, but ASP under Bryn Boice’s taut direction is strikingly calling into question audience preconceptions about [what] it means to be a leader or a follower, the nature of alliances, the enormity of war and the power of both friendship and love. As such, this staging becomes an exploration of which Shakespeare would likely approve.
Director Boice endows her staging with an incisive sense of ritual and metaphor – especially as soldiers purposefully put down their weapons near the close. A chant convincingly states that “This (Brutus) was woman!” Likewise theatergoers — male and female — are likely to say of ASP’s exquisite staging “This is ‘Julius Caesar.'”
-Jules Becker, The Jewish Journal
...director Bryn Boice establish[es] a foreboding mood while suggesting the patterns of fatefulness that will subsequently run through her darkly compelling [all-female production]...it’s intriguing to see how Boice reworks the end of “Julius Caesar’’ so that Antony’s famous final encomium to Brutus (“This was the noblest Roman of them all . . . nature might stand up and say to all the world ‘This was a man’ ’’) so that it registers not just as a victor’s tribute to the vanquished but as a broader statement of female solidarity."
-Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe
Under the direction of Bryn Boice, the world of Rome, ruled by the god-like Julius Caesar played by a confident, self-absorbed Liz Adams, is totally inhabited by women.
To watch this experimental portrait of an Amazon-like kingdom is to question the conventional wisdom that women are more gentle, kind and forgiving than men...
[The cast is led by] a powerful Marya Lowry [as Brutus], Bobbie Steinbach in a devious and mesmerizing performance [as Cassius]...[and] Marianna Bassham as the most effective Mark Antony to have played the role in recent memory...Her declarative delivery of Antony’s funeral speech that builds from sympathy for the perpetrators to riling up the populace is a marvel of intention, crafty choice of words, and vocal timbre, all the more terrifying for its’ success."
-Iris Fanger, Wicked Local
"The Actors’ Shakespeare Project production of 'Julius Caesar' features women in all of the parts, a female director and an all-woman design team to boot. And, if anything, it is darker and more foreboding than any production of 'Caesar' I’ve seen..."
​-Rich Fahey, OnBostonStages.com

Henry IV Part 1
Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.
​Apprentice Company
Boston and Tour, Summer 2017

Scenic, Properties, and Costume Design: Brooke Stanton
Violence Design: Matt Dray
​Sound Design: Bryn Boice
Choreographer: Peter DiMuro
PHOTOS: Nile Scott Shots

I, Snowflake
Devised by Anthem Theatre Company
Written by Bryn Boice
BU Dance Theater & remount at
Charlestown Working Theater
Winter 2016/Spring 2017

Lighting Design: Kelly Martin
Snowflake's Costume Design: Stephanie Brownell
Sound Design: Bryn Boice
Props Design: Mary Sader
Movement: Bryn Boice
Photos: Bryn Boice
The ensemble work in this production is selfless, and gorgeous. The all-lady cast gives of themselves unconditionally. We receive a deeply personal and personalized performance from them. Boice’s staging is inventive and enables the ensembles character work to blossom...Julee Antonellis delivers her mime work as Snowflake with excellent control...Her Pierrot is no pining fool. She actively seeks to understand, and be understood. She represents everyone who feels voiceless.
​​
For a show that was created, soup to nuts, in under 3 months 
I, SnowFlake is damned impressive on any scale. It pulls from a large community, and speaks to an even larger one. Which is why it should go on tour...[and] deserves to be seen by as many people as possible in the next four years."
-Kitty Drexel, New England Theatre Geek
Bryn Boice’s I, SNOWFLAKE is part elegant choreo-poem, part verbatim accounts...[of] post-election shock...The witnesses, all dressed alike in crisp white shirts, black leggings and cradling iPhones, lament the sorrows we all grieve about: global warming, violence, genocide, nuclear annihilation and so much more and more and more.
​
They’re dogged by a resilient little mime (the sensational Julee Antonellis) who is buffeted about and dispatched numerous times (most chillingly gunned down like Trayvon Martin and his many, many successors). Boice wisely balances the terrible sorrows and fears with humor and cheek. 
​
Boice offers the best dissection I’ve yet encountered of the insidious, seemingly faultless male catcall, “Smile,” which is punctuated by Caitlin Jones’ stellar rendition of Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me.”  The ensemble of ten extraordinary women utilizes metaphor, music, fluid movement and righteous indignation to drive home their hopeful (thank goodness) message: Each snowflake is unique and fragile by itself but thousands of snowflakes together can bring a city to a halt."
-Beverly Creasy, Boston Arts Review
 Much like a snowstorm, I hope it spreads and remains utterly devastating. See it while you have the chance."
-Gillian Daniels, NE Theatre Geek

Twelfth Night of the Living Dead 
by Bryan MacInnis Smallwood
Anthem Theatre Company
Boston, Fall 2016

Scenic Design: Jessica Pizzuti
Lighting Design: Kayleigha Zawacki
Costume Design: Rebecca Jewett
Sound Design: Jess Malone
Blood Props Design: Johnny Kinsman
Fight Choreography: Matt Dray
Movement: Bryn Boice
Photos: Bryn Boice
What happens when a genuine Shakespeare troupe puts on a nuanced, well-acted performance of Twelfth Night, where the characters get attacked by zombies, like in the film Night of the Living Dead?
Surprisingly, it’s intelligent, hilarious fun. It’s gross and disgusting, but also compelling and deep. Did I mention hilarious? At the end of the performance you’ll be left stunned. What just happened?
The actors clearly know what they are doing, without a weak performance in the cast. Erica Jade Simpson takes the lead, as the first zombie of many, with physical comedy that is laugh out loud funny...and every line in the play is taken from Twelfth Night."
--Johnny Monsarrat, Boston Events Insider

By injecting blood and guts into the play, Boice and the cast [cast] aside the shackles of historical importance to bring us an energized update on Shakespeare. If you can handle the flying brains and the squirting blood, this production could serve as a gateway drug to fall in love with the Bard anew."
-Craig Idlebrook, New England Theatre Geek

Romeo VS. Juliet
by Johnny Kinsman
​Anthem Theatre Company
Joan Lorentz Park, Cambridge, MA
Summer 2016
Funded by a generous grant from The Hollister Family Foundation

Directed by Bryn Boice
Costumes and Props: Bryn Boice and Johnny Kinsman
Music sourced from The Library of Congress
PHOTOS: Tess Wenger
THE BARD MEETS BASEBALL: Romeo and Juliet staged as a vaudeville comedy"--feature by Joel Brown for BU Today 

DIRECTING EXPERIENCE
                                                        
The Children**                                                 Lucy Kirkwood                                                       Speakeasy Stage Company
Admissions**                                                    Joshua Harmon                                                     The Gamm Theatre (R.I.)
A Midsummer Night's Dream                     William Shakespeare                                            Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)                                           
Blue Kettle & Here We Go*                          Caryl Churchill                                                       Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
Henry VI part 2                                                William Shakespeare                                           Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
Red Velvet                                                          Lolita Chakrabarti                                                Office of War Information/BCA
Julius Caesar                                                     William Shakespeare                                          Actors’ Shakespeare Project
Henry IV part 1                                                 William Shakespeare                                          Commonwealth Shakes (Apprentice Co.)
The 25th Annual...Spelling Bee                    W. Finn & R. Sheinkin                                         Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center
Rosmersholm                                                     Henrik Ibsen                                                           Boston University (Thesis)
Misalliance                                                         George Bernard Shaw                                        Boston University Stages
boom                                                                    Peter Sinn-Nachtrieb                                          Boston University Stages                 
The Serpent                                                        Jean-Claude Van Itallie                                      Boston University Stages                              
Endgame                                                             Samuel Beckett                                                      Boston University Stages                                   
Machinal                                                             Sophie Treadwell                                                   Boston University Stages                                                           
Wonder of the World                                      David Lindsay-Abaire                                           Stephens College, MO
Speaking in Tongues                                        Andrew Bovell                                                         Australian Made Entertainment (NYC)
Navy Pier                                                            John Corwin                                                            Theatre Row/InProximity Theatre (NYC)
Orange Flower Water                                     Craig Wright                                                            Theatre 54/InProximity Theatre
*Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Director, Large Theater
**UPCOMING 2019
DIRECTION of NEW WORKS, ADAPTATIONS, & DEVISED PROJECTS
Last Night at Bowl-Mor Lanes**                Weylin Symes                                                            Greater Boston Theatre Company
My Fascination (with Creepy Ladies)**           Bryn Boice                                                                  Anthem Theatre Company

I, Snowflake                                                       Bryn Boice                                                                  Anthem Theatre Company
12th Night of the Living Dead                    Brian MacInnis Smallwood                                  Anthem Theatre Company/BCA                 
The Merry Way                                                Bryn Boice                                                                  Anthem Theatre Company
Romeo VS. Juliet                                             Johnny Kinsman                                                       Anthem Theatre Company
No Vacancies                                                    Dan Schultz                                                                Okoboji Summer Theatre (Okoboji, IA)
Last Woman Standing                                    Allie Kauffman, M. Timonina                              Boston University Stages
Sickle                                                                    Abbey Fenbert                                                         Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
A Comedy of Errors, for 4                              Will Ditterline, Mike Wamser                            Anthem Theatre Company/BCA
Puppet Love***                                                  Mya Kagan                                                                 American Globe Theatre (NYC)
No-Fault                                                              Christie Perfetti                                                      NYC Fringe Festival 
Stuck                                                                     Bryn Boice                                                                 taxdeductible theatre/The Dare Project
***Turnip Festival of Short Plays. Honorable Mentions: Outstanding Direction, Best Play;
Winner: Best Actress. Later remounted for Ars Nova’s ANTFest (NYC).
 
 
                                                                        ACTING RESUME AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
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