‘K-I-S-S-I-N-G’ – Written by Lenelle Moïse. Directed by Dawn M. Simmons. Scenic Design by Jason Ardizzone-West. Costume Design by Dominique Fawn Hill. Lighting Design by Jorge Arroyo. Sound Design by Anna Drummond. Projections Design by Yee Eun Nam and Hannah Tran. Co-produced by the Front Porch Arts Collective and the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, Boston through April 2, 2023.

by Linda Chin

The coming-of-age play now making its world premiere at Boston’s Calderwood Pavilion did not come into being from a hurried hook-up, nor inexperienced young people sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.  A decade in the making, Lenelle Moïse wrote early drafts during her 2012-2014 Huntington Playwrighting Fellowship, and its development history went something like the titular schoolyard rhyme: First came love –  in the form of a commission by Clark University, staged readings at the New Rep and Huntington in 2015 and 2016, and an educational production at Ithaca College (2018). Then came ‘marriage’ – a three-year strategic partnership between Front Porch Arts Collective and the Huntington that started in the fall of 2021, connected Moïse and Porch’s Co-Producing Artistic Directors Maurice Emmanuel Parent and Dawn M. Simmons and catalyzed the companies’ first co-production. A tree growing in Boston has blossomed and borne the loveliest, sweetest fruit. Welcome to the world, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

Read more “A Tree  Grows in Boston and Bears Fruit: K-I-S-S-I-N-G at the Huntington”