Homeless highlighted in holiday play

Meagan Dilworth, Jasmine Rush, and Marjorie Tatum are actors in Writing Home, a play written by homeless women with the help of Emerson students and alumni through the organization Stories Without Roofs. (Courtesy Photo)

Several Emerson students and alumni are involved in Writing Home, a theater production written by Boston–area homeless people with the help of artists and educators at Stories Without Roofs, a social justice theater organization in Boston.

The show opens Thursday, December 18, and runs through Sunday, December 21, at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue.

The assistant director is Marcy Braidman, MFA ’14, who said the most meaningful moments for her came when a group of homeless men she worked with at the Salvation Army in Cambridge “realized we took them seriously as writers.”

“What makes Stories Without Roofs so important,” Braidman said, “is it invites the audience to hear stories that are happening all around them in Boston without them having any idea.”

Braidman is graduating this month with an MFA in Creative Writing. She received a bachelor’s degree in theater from University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Performing Arts students and alumni include: Marissa Wahkuna ’01, the production’s musical composer; Kathleen Burke ’15, an actor; and Megan Dilworth, MA ’16, an actor.

Writing Home features an all-female cast. The writers of the production are all women who are clients at On The Rise, a day shelter program in Cambridge.

Last year’s holiday production, Transitions, featured writing from the men of the Salvation Army in Cambridge.

Misch Whitaker, the Stories Without Roofs program director, said she created the program to combine her two passions of theater and social justice. She is a registered nurse at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless and a comedy performer.

“When people realize how much all of us have in common…they start to think about the whole concept of homelessness differently,” Whitaker said in a press release.