Well, you know what they say, right? It’s all good fun until a hydrangea loses its roots.  

To introduce the show now playing at Gablestage in its most basic sense: Native Gardens is a play that revolves around a dispute between neighbors over the potential placement of a fence meant to divide their gardens. But before I contemplate the absurdity of finding myself close to tears at the conclusion of a play about a garden dispute, I suppose I should explain that the show’s true subject could perhaps be more accurately described as the joy that can be found when the sense of common humanity overcomes the surface obstacles to understanding. 

NYC-based playwright Stephen Brown is having quite the moment in South Florida. Boca’s Theatre Lab has/will run two of his recent plays and LITTLE MONTGOMERY (formerly known as “Country Girls”) is currently enjoying a Florida premiere by New City Players (NCP) at Island City Stage in Wilton Manors. If the name “Little Montgomery” rings a bell, you might have enjoyed listening to NCP’s highly creative serial podcast version back in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. 

Though the two main characters of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, Lillian and Michael, are both loners by nature, there’s no arguing with the fact that it does, indeed, take two to tango. To name a few more of the styles that this odd couple ends up traversing over the course of the popular play currently on view at Empire Stage from fledgling company Artbuzz Theatrics, it also takes two to swing, waltz, foxtrot, cha-cha, and at least in some cases, contemporary dance. 

South Florida staple “Summer Shorts” is back in action for this year with an exciting collection of brand new short plays brought to us by the participants in Homegrown, a new playwright development program from City Theatre that provides a cohort of Miami’s emerging BIPOC playwrights with creative and networking opportunities over a two year period.