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What a time we live in!

Theatres around the world are challenged. How do we provide live performance? Connect with and serve audiences? Employ artists?

The Theatre Department is responding. We're reimagining theatre for a virtual world while creating meaningful opportunities for our students. We take pride and pleasure in welcoming Nael Nacer (Suffolk '06) back to the Theatre Department. It took a global pandemic to find a time when our schedules fit. To Gather Apart is a devised theatre piece developed from the individual and collective hearts and minds of the company. Nael inspired the work, curated, transcribed, drove us forward, and transformed it into the original theatrical event that we are live-streaming this evening.

We remember Nael's remarkable performances while a student at Suffolk (Othello, Assassins, You Can't Take It With You, Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, The Conference of the Birds, The Suicide, A Country Doctor....and others!). He also directed a smart, inventive, and enormously successful production of Charles Mee’s Imperialists at the Club Cave Canem. Neal's ambition, his deep connection, and absolute dedication to his work has always been an inspiration to us.

Wes invited Nael to return to the Theatre Department as a guest artist in his original musical Car Talk: The Musical!!! and again, in his adaptation of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. Nael is now an eminent theatre artist, one of the most sought after and respected in Boston. He is also an exceptional person. We are fortunate to have him working among us this semester.

I am grateful to Wes and his long connection with Nael, to the Theatre Department faculty and staff, and the ensemble and production team of To Gather Apart, who consistently demonstrate impressive resiliency and resourcefulness and the pioneering spirit we need during these challenging times.