DRIVING IN CIRCLES Comes to Boston Playwrights' Theatre

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre will continue its 2023-24 season with Driving in Circles, a tour-de-force new musical, written, composed and performed by Jay Eddy. Running from March 21 to April 6, the play is directed by Sam Plattus.

Driving in Circles is a darkly funny, solo-ish folktronica musical about how we recover from trauma. The show chronicles the main character’s winding journey to metabolize, heal, and love as an adult who experienced childhood sexual abuse. Stylistically, it is a cross between a rock concert, confessional monologue, and stand-up comedy. The production interweaves live performance and video projection, as well as live music and tracked sounds, crafting a kaleidoscope of past and present, memory and meaning. 

“When I first heard and read Driving in Circles, I was blown away. I instantly knew that I wanted this to be part of the first season that I programmed at BPT and I am so excited to share it with Boston audiences,” BPT Artistic Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian says. “Driving is somehow a show about recovery without being a show about trauma. It is a beautiful, wrenching, funny piece that considers the longview of the aftermath of devastating abuse, lifting up love and community—including the kind built through storytelling and in a night at the theater—as the essential forces that allow us to survive terrible things. And the music! Sophisticated, dynamic, catchy, and like nothing I’ve heard before.”

Driving in Circles has already received numerous awards and honors, including the prestigious Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival’s (KCACTF) Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, as well as KCACTF’s Musical Theatre Award. 

As Eddy and the creative team move towards the first full production at BPT, they are thinking about how to invite audiences into the work in the most welcoming and exciting way. 

“How do we take this deeply personal, intimate piece and make it feel like magic?” says Eddy, who is a 2023 graduate of Boston University’s M.F.A. in Playwriting Program. “How can we preserve the feeling that I’m sharing a secret with the audience, while also transporting them to a place where real change—love, community solutions, restorative justice, hope for the future—feels possible?”

Sandberg-Zakian admits that preparing to produce such a technically ambitious musical has been a challenge for BPT, but one that she is thrilled to take on. 

“We have certainly spent a lot of time thinking about acoustics and the technical side of music and sound in our wonderful black box space!” she says. “But it will definitely be worth it when audiences can say that they first saw Driving in Circles at BPT. I am certain that it will be going big places from here on out.”

Eddy is a current Artistic Research Fellow with the Folger Theatre and a recent New Jewish Culture fellow. Director Plattus returns to BPT after appearing in Alligator-a-Phobia in 3D! last spring. Other directing credits include The Boys Are Angry (New York International Fringe Festival) and Cabaret (The Harpers).

In addition to Eddy, Driving in Circles features musicians Zach Fontanez, who appeared at BPT in last season’s Alligator-a-Phobia in 3D!, and Jordan Palmer.

The creative team includes Scenic Designer Danielle DelaFuente, Costume Designer Eric Tran, Lighting Designer Kevin Fulton, Projection Designer Maria Servellon, Sound Designer Gage Baker, Production Stage Manager Fanni Horváth and Associate Director Pamela Ross. Ashleigh Reade serves as vocal and text coach.

Driving in Circles has been developed with additional support from the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Connecticut Office of the Arts, the Center for New Jewish Culture, Yaddo and The New Harmony Project.

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