Exploring family roots and history in ‘The Meeting Tree’

Susan Saccoccia

A recipient of NEA Arts Journalism fellowships in dance, theater and music, Susan reviews visual and performing arts in the U.S. and overseas.

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The joyful abandon of a friendship between two girls is the heart and soul of the poetic play “The Meeting Tree” by B. Elle Borders, on stage through Aug. 9 in a world-premiere production by Company One Theatre (C1) at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester.

Inventively directed by Summer L. Williams, C1’s associate artistic director and co-founder, C1 is producing “The Meeting Tree” in partnership with the Front Porch Arts Collective and the City of Boston’s Office of Arts and Culture and offers pay-what-you-want tickets.

The first play by Borders, a Boston theater artist and educator, begins as Sofia, who is pregnant, arrives at the Alabama farm where her ancestors were once slaves. She is determined to obtain rights to the land she believes her family has been granted before she brings a new generation into the world. 

“I wrote ‘The Meeting Tree’ to imagine a new ending for my family story,” said Borders. In an interview with C1’s dramaturg afrikah selah published in the production’s program, Border describes the play as inspired by her grandmother’s memories of a childhood friendship with a white girl on the farm where Border’s ancestors had been slaves. Her grandmother later learned that she and her friend had ties of blood as well as spirit.

Beyoncé Martinez as Dixie and Jacqui Parker as Katherine “Kitty” Montclair in “The Meeting Tree.” PHOTO: Annielly Camargo

The production’s fine program includes a family tree of the play’s six characters, all female, as well as a timeline aligning their lifespans with real events, from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the Great Migration and on to present day.

Tender at times but not sentimental, the play unfolds with the open-ended suggestiveness of a poem through a series of encounters between characters within and across generations.

Artful staging by Williams employs Cristina Todesco’s deft haiku of a set and lighting by Elmer Martinez to engage the audience in imagining the story. Against a black backdrop, spare and evocative elements conjure the play’s journey across time. Stage left, the fragment of a grand staircase leads to a lone white pillar suggesting an antebellum mansion. Midstage, a tall construction of slender slats represents the now lifeless pecan tree that was once cherished as both a source of food and a magical meeting place where strangers find mutual understanding and even love. On the far right is a single bed covered with a quilt, the product of a traditional craft practiced by generations of Black women.

When the show begins, the house lights go dark and then go back on, for a moment making the audience as visible as those on stage. In the course of the play, as characters emerge from the past, the lighting casts shadows of dappled leaves on the audience as well as the stage, drawing all into the scene. Props by Jason Ries are also expressive. Sofia (Anjie Parker) arrives bearing a brass urn that contains her grandmother Dixie’s ashes. Together with her yet-unborn child Sofia brings multiple generations together.

Costumes by Amanda Mujica also tell the story. Dixie wears plain farm clothes while Tessie is attired in fancy dresses. Jacqui Parker’s Kitty, Dixie’s grandmother, is attired in homespun garb and a headwrap. Alex Alexander’s statuesque and severe Elizabeth, the grandmother of Tessie, stands motionless in a long, dark dress. Alison, played by Sarah Elizabeth Bedard, the white descendant who inhabits the farm, is outfitted in overalls and brandishes a gardening tool that at first looks like a weapon. Urbane Sofia wears a pert maternity top with ruffles.

Sarah Elizabeth Bedard as Alison Browning and Anjie Parker as Sofia Langton in “The Meeting Tree.” PHOTO: ANNIELLY CAMARGO

In the first scene, Sofia and Alison warily take the measure of one another. Each woman insists on her ancestral claim to the land, which is being worked by Alison, who hopes to restore it.

The tree that once supplied shade, a meeting place and pecans for pies baked by Kitty is worn out and even the land, Alison observes, is “brown and dead.” They trade creds. Alison describes herself as “progressive enough” and a graduate of Auburn University. Sofia lets Alison know that she graduated second in her class from Yale. In later exchanges, mutual respect ebbs into their dialogues and together they seek — and uncover — the truth.

The scene shifts to Dixie and Tessie as they first meet while gathering pecans from the tree. Nuts tumble down when Dixie shakes it — and even more when expertly wacked by Tessie. Rachel Hall is a captivating Tessie, here as a whistling, high-spirited nine-year-old and later as a 21-year-old dressed for her wedding, still whistling and playful with her beloved Dixie. But Dixie, played by the compelling Beyoncé Martinez — astonishingly nimble as both preteen Dixie and later as a young woman attired as a domestic — tells Tessie that she will soon “start acting like a lady” and predicts that their bond will not survive the transition. However, the story does not end here. 

Each character, even Elizabeth, gains a sympathetic moment. And last but not least, the long-dead patriarch, “Senior,” gets his say. Open minds and hearts go a long way in this parable of redemptive healing in a polarized time.