REPAIR AND REPARATIONS

Company One’s world premiere of The Meeting Tree powerfully evokes the debate and the struggle over reparations and restitution through the lives of six women, some Black, some white, all of them related through their connection to one white man who lived in Alabama before the abolition of slavery. Director Summer L. Williams (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding; King Hedley II) brings this complex story, told through interconnected vignettes that carry us through generations of friendship and racial conflict, to the stage of the historic Strand Theater in one of Boston’s oldest neighborhoods, Upham’s Corner.

Beyoncé Martinez and Rachel Hall

Boston-based artist B. Elle Borders created this moving play from a story told by her grandmother, a Black woman who had a girlhood friendship with a white girl who she later learned was her cousin. It’s not uncommon for white people and Black people to be related through ancestry. Still, when Sofia Langton (Anjie Parker), a Black woman, shows up at the Alabama pecan farm on which Alison Browning (Sarah Elizabeth Bedard) lives, she’s initially disbelieving. Sofia has come to what she describes as this “pass-through” town to fulfill a promise to her grandmother, Dixie Mae Montclair (Beyoncé Martinez), to reclaim the land that rightfully belongs to her family.

Anjie Parker and Sarah Elizabeth Bedard

Alison has spent several years of her life trying to make the pecan farm productive and has difficulty accepting that anyone else has a claim to this land, but Sofia persists. She won’t abandon her claim to her family’s land or her right to be who she is. It’s only after Alison challenges her by asking her who her lawyer is and Sofia calmly replies that she is her own lawyer, having graduated second in her class from Yale Law, that Alison begins to cooperate with the effort to locate their great-great-grandfather’s will.

Rachel Hall, Anjie Parker, and Beyoncé Martinez

In many ways, the play presents the struggle for reparations for centuries of racial injustice in microcosm. Sofia, calm and determined, pushes Alison to acknowledge what she is owed. Alison moves from hostility to apology, but that’s not enough. “I need you to mean it,” Sofia tells her, and urges her to stop playing games.

Beyoncé Martinez and Jacqui Parker

The loss of Sofia’s heritage happened before Alison was born, and at one point, Alison cites this to excuse her intractability, but Sofia points out that Alison has been fighting to hold on to what she has gained as the result of earlier injustices. Martinez skillfully portrays Sofia’s grandmother at two stages, as both an elderly woman and as a young girl who finds friendship with her white cousin Tessie Montclair (Rachel Hall). Martinez and Hall are charming as girls who find emotional support in each other, despite the world in which they live. Tessie seeks an escape from her harsh grandmother (Alex Alexander), while Dixie’s grandmother (Jacqui Parker), after her initial hesitance, accepts the white cousin into her home while teaching Dixie that the relationship is not commensurate: Dixie cannot enter Tessie’s house as an equal.

 Anjie Parker and Beyoncé Martinez

At the center of the story and the stage, Scenic Designer Cristina Todesco‘s massive and beautiful tree delivers a shower of pecans on demand, while Aubrey Dube’s sound design works to signal the power of history and ancestry even in the present day.

Sarah Elizabeth Bedard and Anjie Parker

It’s a poignant and meaningful story, one which, despite all odds, ends on an optimistic note. The one hiccup for me was Alison’s transition from hostility to would-be ally. While her struggles to live up to her own aspirations are convincingly portrayed, I found that initial leap hard to believe. Even so, Borders has a story worth telling, and this cast brings it forth in a satisfying way.

Sarah Elizabeth Bedard and Anjie Parker

photos by Annielly Camargo

The Meeting Tree
Company One Theatre
in collaboration with Front Porch Arts Collective
Strand Theatre, 543 Columbia Rd. in Dorchester MA
75 minutes, no intermission
ends on August 9, 2025
for tickets (Pay-What-You-Want), visit Company One