Theatre & Performing Arts
Frontieres Sans Frontieres
Frontieres Sans Frontieres
By Phillip Howze
Directed by Kezia Waters
July 17th – August 24th, 2025
Thursdays 7 pm, Saturdays 3 pm & 7 pm, Sundays 3 pm
10 BEST THEATRICAL PRODUCTIONS OF [2019]!
“Linguistically acrobatic and piercingly funny, Frontieres is a whip-smart modern burlesque that deserves a wider audience. – New York Magazine
“A brightly colored, comic fantasia on cultural imperialism.
There is much beauty in this abundance, and something deeply unsettling, too.” – The New York Times
Critics’ Pick! “Howze’s exciting piece is a savage burlesque, a clear-eyed bouffon treatment of war.”
– Time Out New York
Here, at the corner of a country that feels both foreign and familiar, three orphaned, stateless youth have built a simple life out of recreation and mischief-making. Their world is rocked as a parade of immodest strangers slowly invade, offering gifts of language, medicine, art, and commerce. As the lure of development blurs their beliefs, life and landscape mutate, threatening their long-held values, community, and humanity. In a comic spectacle to challenge the pretense of altruism and civilization, Frontieres Sans Frontieres asks what happens when generosity looks a lot like self-interest?
How to comprehend when the promise of language matures to the tyranny of words?
Who wins and who loses in a war to hold on to the people and places we love?
“A kaleidoscope of funny, absurd displays of humanity swinging, pendulum-like, between the mundane and the magical, the minuscule and the grand. One moment we are zoomed in: a child turning water from a leaking roof into a triumphant cup of tea. The next moment we are zoomed out: systemic exploitation of natural resources […] Sometimes hilarious, sometimes utterly heartbreaking, the constant flickering between innocence and pain is this play’s metronome.” – Bushwick Daily
