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Greater Good

World Premiere

Greater Good

A.R.T. Breakout

  • Jul 17, 2019 - Aug 17, 2019

  • Commonwealth School

  • Run Time: Two hours and forty-five minutes with no intermission

Recommended for ages 13+. If you have questions or concerns about your performance on the day you’re scheduled to attend, you can contact our Patron Services team at 617.460.4639 starting one hour prior to curtain. Otherwise, you may reach the A.R.T. Ticket Services Office at 617.547.8300 during their regular hours, Tuesday – Sunday, noon – 5PM.

Recommended for ages 13+. If you have questions or concerns about your performance on the day you’re scheduled to attend, you can contact our Patron Services team at 617.460.4639 starting one hour prior to curtain. Otherwise, you may reach the A.R.T. Ticket Services Office at 617.547.8300 during their regular hours, Tuesday – Sunday, noon – 5PM.

  • Run Time

    Two hours and forty-five minutes with no intermission

Learn more:

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Provides a stage for so many issues & really, really funny. The actors are brilliant…You’re caught up in the drama. It really feels like you’re eavesdropping.”

WGBH Under the Radar

Greenidge is never one to shy away from topics that fuel fiery debates [and] seems to have an uncanny sense of the world around her.

The Boston Globe

Welcome to Gleason Street—where the teachers are underpaid, the head of school is overwhelmed, and we do NOT talk about that thing that happened at the last parent council meeting (so don’t bother asking about it).

As the audience tours the struggling elementary school, each classroom explored and each encounter witnessed could upend our assumptions about the ways we educate, govern, and collectively strive toward the greater good. Equal parts playful and provoking, Obie Award winner Kirsten Greenidge’s Greater Good is a one-of-a-kind theatrical experience.

Greater Good will be staged throughout the halls and classrooms of Back Bay’s Commonwealth School. Audiences will experience the play in small groups—guided from room to room—as the story moves backward through time, its scenes interlocking like puzzle pieces as we hurdle back towards last spring’s fateful meeting of the parent council.

Greater Good is an immersive performance in which the audience will be guided around a school building. The audience path includes three flights of stairs and may include periods of standing, though we are dedicated to providing accommodations to all audience members. All spaces are accessible to wheelchairs and other mobility devices via an elevator. While there is no formal intermission, there are moments throughout the show where patrons can take a break or use the restrooms. With any accessibility needs, questions, and concerns, please call the A.R.T. Ticket Services at 617.547.8300 or email access@amrep.org.

 

By Kirsten Greenidge
Directed by Steven Bogart
Produced by Company One Theatre in collaboration with the A.R.T. and with support from the Mellon Foundation’s National Playwright Residency Program administered in partnership with HowlRound

Notable dates

Opening Night: 7/20

Venue

Commonwealth School from Dartmouth Street

Commonwealth School

151 Commonwealth Ave.
Boston, MA  02116

Directions, parking, and more about Commonwealth School.

Learn More

Directions, parking, and more about Commonwealth School.

Learn More

Commonwealth School
151 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02116

Photos & Videos

Blyss Cleveland with Eli Troen, one of the production’s tour guides.

Greater Good Teaser

Watch Now
Rachel Cognata, Brooks Reeves, and Becca A. Lewis.

Greater Good Production Photos

6 items

Press Coverage

Reviews

Rachel Cognata, Brooks Reeves, and Becca A. Lewis.

The Boston Globe

Ingenious, ambitious, and absorbing. A story that matters. Few writers have a better ear than Greenidge.

Read full article

Ingenious, ambitious, and absorbing. A story that matters. Few writers have a better ear than Greenidge.

Read full article

Brooks Reeves with members of the audience.

WBUR The ARTery

Intriguing, provocative, and ingeniously immersive. [A] moveable feast cleverly orchestrated by director Steven Bogart.

Read full article

Intriguing, provocative, and ingeniously immersive. [A] moveable feast cleverly orchestrated by director Steven Bogart.

Read full article

Features

The cast of GREATER GOOD

The Boston Globe

Creating a learning environment with the new play ‘Greater Good’

“The play is really a microcosm of how oftentimes those of us in the progressive corner of the world may think we’re always doing the right thing,” [Playwright Kirsten] Greenidge says, “but we tend to live our lives without a lot of deep introspection about how we can make choices geared towards the greater good of those around us.” Issues of race, class, and gender play out in sometimes surprising ways in the play. “The people who have money and influence and power are perhaps not the people you expect.”

Read full article

“The play is really a microcosm of how oftentimes those of us in the progressive corner of the world may think we’re always doing the right thing,” [Playwright Kirsten] Greenidge says, “but we tend to live our lives without a lot of deep introspection about how we can make choices geared towards the greater good of those around us.” Issues of race, class, and gender play out in sometimes surprising ways in the play. “The people who have money and influence and power are perhaps not the people you expect.”

Read full article

Christine Power, Shahjehan Khan, Dominic Carter, Blyss Cleveland, Rachel Cognata, and Becca A. Lewis.

WBUR Radio Boston

Play Takes Audiences On Search For The ‘Greater Good’ In Our Education System

There is a question at the end of the play: how can we make change where we are. A lot of people might say, ‘I’m just one person, how can I make change.’ There are many tables of power that we sit within…if my play can get someone to say, ‘Where am I, and how can I make change?,” I’d love for that to happen.

Read full article

There is a question at the end of the play: how can we make change where we are. A lot of people might say, ‘I’m just one person, how can I make change.’ There are many tables of power that we sit within…if my play can get someone to say, ‘Where am I, and how can I make change?,” I’d love for that to happen.

Read full article

Kirsten Greenidge

BU Today

Pop Quiz for the Parents Council: What Does Progressive Mean?

The characters talk about moving forward, but instead go backward, a contradiction Greenidge compares to the 2016 election and the pundits basically Monday morning quarterbacking, asking, “How did we get here?”…Around the same time, Greenidge “began to really get interested in democracy and the different spaces we occupy, in our homes, but also at work and the spaces we choose to occupy that keep our lives running—local governments, church groups,” she says.

Read full article

The characters talk about moving forward, but instead go backward, a contradiction Greenidge compares to the 2016 election and the pundits basically Monday morning quarterbacking, asking, “How did we get here?”…Around the same time, Greenidge “began to really get interested in democracy and the different spaces we occupy, in our homes, but also at work and the spaces we choose to occupy that keep our lives running—local governments, church groups,” she says.

Read full article

Explore

Playwright Kirsten Greenidge

Studio Session

JUN 18, 2019 7PM
Minni, South End

Get a sneak peek into the rehearsal process of Greater Good and learn how it will move audiences from space to space throughout the performance at this free event.

Get a sneak peek into the rehearsal process of Greater Good and learn how it will move audiences from space to space throughout the performance at this free event.