SOOTHSAY

BY GABRIELA SANDERS

BOSTON THEATER MARATHON 2026

Two women seek comfort as they grapple with the suffocating realities of life, death, and what comes after. Who holds the true insight: mother or daughter? Medium or ghost?

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre produces the annual Boston Theater Marathon (BTM), an award-winning, all-day marathon of new 10-minute plays. The plays are chosen from approximately 400 entries from New England playwrights, and the 50 selected plays are produced by 50 New England theatre companies which donate their time (and talent!) to this event.

Inspired by the iconic Boston Marathon, the BTM is a theater endurance event designed to make connections between local playwrights and local theatres—seeding new collaborations and strengthening existing ones, and encouraging more companies to consider producing new plays by local writers!—and to introduce audiences to the breadth and depth of the Boston playwriting and theatre scene.

The yearly event provides a showcase—and a connecting point—for the entire theatre community. Generously supported over the years by the Boston University Center for the Humanities and by individual donations, the BTM gifts its net proceeds to the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, an organization that helps area theatre artists and companies in crisis. In 2000, the BTM received a special Elliot Norton Award from the Boston Theatre Critics Association for “Enlivening Local Theatre.”