By Kilian Melloy

SpeakEasy Stage Company kicks off its 36^th season with Covenant, a Halloween-ready offering by playwright York Walker that brings the supernatural scares while investigating a complex series of interlocking relationships — girlhood friendships, sisterhood, mother-daughter dynamics, and longstanding romantic attraction.

A small town is rocked by rumors that a local man named Johnny James, now known as “Honeycomb” James (Anthony T. Goss), gained his musical talents after making a deal with the devil. His homecoming is marked by a renewed connection with a young woman, and childhood friend, named Avery (Deannah DRIPP Blemur), but Avery’s mother, Mama (Crystin Gilmore), disapproves of their reunion — and Honeycomb’s proposal of marriage — thanks to the gossip about Honeycomb’s supposedly infernal dealings. Mama, however, has her own sins to reckon with, and they resurface in the wake of Honeycomb’s return.

Meantime, Avery’s sister, Violet (Sydney Alicia Jackson), struggles with her own unvoiced attraction to Honeycomb, even as she seeks to gain Mama’s approval. Intrigued by the rumors swirling around Honeycomb, she and her friend Ruthie (Kayla Sessoms) contemplate demonic interventions of their own.

“It gets us talking about questions of worth and value,” noted SpeakEasy’s Producing Artistic Director, Dawn Simmons, in a Zoom interview with QulturVultur. “Is that thing that you want worth the price you’re going to pay? There is the idea of wanting something so badly you would do anything for it, and that kind of mythology lets us think about that a little bit,” Simmons, who directs the production, added. “Is it worth your soul? And is it going to go the way you think?”

Everyone has their secrets in this play, and everyone has their agenda. But do one or more characters have a pact with perdition to get what they want? The show suns at the Boston Center for the Arts from September 25 – October 17. Meantime, read on to see what Simmons had to say about the play and her directorial choices, the cultural and personal dangers of single-minded and selfish pursuits, and what else awaits on SpeakEasy’s slate this season.

QulturVultur: Horror stories work on a couple levels. They usually involve a threat to a family, but also you’re scared of what’s inside of yourself. Like, “Of course I understand she wants to protect her daughter. Of course I understand he wants to pursue his lifelong ambition. I might go to similar extremes in their shoes.”

Dawn Simmons: Throughout this show, everybody reveals their own secrets, but those are revealed through the pressure of this thing that’s going on. You see how these things have been impacting their lives, and their relationships, and their motivations. It just needed a catalyst for all of it to bubble up.

This is what I love about York. He’s working on so many levels. The family units are a nuclear family; this friendship family of these three girls who’ve known each other since like childhood; the two lovers who’ve also like known each other since childhood. At the core of this play are a series of love stories: Familial love stories, romantic love stories, friendship love stories. And then, selfishly, I want theater that moves you — it moves your opinions, your ideals. It moves you emotionally, it gets you out of your seat. I think this one is going to have people jumping out of their seat, and I love it.

QulturVultur: Is that what drew you to direct Covenant yourself?

Dawn Simmons: Yes, I get to have some fun. I love the Halloween season. I love to be scared in big ways and in small ways. I love a corn maze. I love a haunted house. We’re seeing a lot of theater now that is bringing that kind of experience to live performance: Paranormal Activity, Black Swan, the Stranger Things show that’s up in New York. These are the big versions of this, but a couple of years ago Actors’ Shakespeare Project did Let the Right One In, and there is The Woman in Black, and Sleepy Hollow. Some of them are really big shows, and some of them are more moody, atmospheric, creepy. This one is somewhere in between.

QulturVultur: These characters have backstories that are sketched with a just a few strokes that are incredibly deft and hit you in the heart. It’s not just fear the play provokes; it’s a multitude of emotions.

Dawn Simmons: Oh, it’s so true. You can fall in love with each one of these characters. You can feel deeply; you want them to have the love that they want. I’ll be really interested to hear who people relate to the most — who they’re cheering for.

QulturVultur: This play presents complex, realistic relationships between women on all kinds of different levels, as well as one man. They’ve all got their own relationship to him, as well.

Dawn Simmons: Yeah, they do. He is fully there, but it’s the women’s story. These women are the ones who have some work to do.

QulturVultur: The play is passing the Bechdel test with flying orange and black colors.

Dawn Simmons: [Laughing] Right?

QulturVultur: This script calls for strong casting.

Dawn Simmons: Kristen Gilmore plays Mama. She has worked on SpeakEasy stages for years, and when I got in last year, she was one of the first people that I reached out to. I’m like, “I don’t know when we’re gonna work together, but I cannot wait.” She is such a chameleon, doing The Color Purple and POTUS and Jaja’s [African Hair Braiding] last year. Mama is not easy in what she carries, especially her secret — oh, it’s so delicious. Having her as a SpeakEasy fave, and somebody that I knew could really ground this cast, was absolutely fantastic.

Anthony Goss is somebody that I have known for a little while. He’s done so much work with Actors’ Shakespeare Project. When [Front Porch Arts Collective co-founder] Maurice [Emmanuel Parent] and I would go to International Black Theater Fest in North Carolina, he was always in a show there. I don’t know what it is about him, but he understands period pieces, like 1930s, 1940s. He just gets it, and he is absolutely wonderful.

Deannah and Sydney are new to me. Sydney’s work I got to see on stage the first time in a reading for [Front Porch Arts Collective’s staged readings of] The Wash, and she was absolutely fantastic! I had seen her on stage at Lyric [Stage Company] last year in [Arms and the Girl], directed by Jaqui Parker, and there’s something about her. I asked her to come in, and the way she attacked Avery, especially in some of the crazier scenes, I was like, “Oh, we can have fun.”

Kayla [Sessoms] and I worked together at the Porch for several years. This is a young artist who I’ve seen grow up, and when she came into that audition, she came like the role was hers. It’s so wonderful to watch somebody that you’ve seen as a recent graduate grow and blossom.

This has been such a dream. We’re in tech, and I’m like, “Everything’s going too well.” I’m waiting for something to happen, but right now I’m like, “What else can we make together? Let’s do it now!”

QulturVultur: There are some stunning surprises and revelations in this play. How are you calibrating the production to coach the audience to where you want to put them before the surprises hit?

Dawn Simmons: Walker’s script leaves so many breadcrumbs, and my calibration is just making sure that I haven’t obscured them so much that the revelations are out of left field. Where can we give just a little hint here or there about a couple of things so that it doesn’t feel like that’s completely unbelievable? It’s the kind of show you want to come and see twice. When I read it, I was like, “Wait!” and I went back and read it again, and then in going back and reading it again I’m like, “Oh my god, everything is right there!”

QulturVultur: What else did you choose for this season, and why?

Dawn Simmons: The next show is Little Bear Ridge Road. I think it is the kind of work that Speakeasy audiences will love. [Playwright] Sam Hunter has been on SpeakEasy stages before. This play is beautiful. It’s funny, it’s touching, it’s heartbreaking. It’s also about family. The trauma, the history, your place in that family, how you are in the world is a sort of amalgamation of how you were parented, or how you weren’t parented. Now that you’re an adult, what are you going to do with all of that? How do you stay in love with family members when things aren’t easy? It is so simple in its storytelling. It’s a really heart-opening kind of play, and I love it.

And then By Any Other Name, which is a sort of retelling of many different Shakespeare stories, but from the point of view of the women. They all get lost in a wood, and they are out there to find their right purpose and power and joy. It is a lovely send-up of Shakespeare. There are so many puns for Shakespeare lovers. It’s right on time, and like a really great way to end the season with kind fun and hope and women’s empowerment. I’m really excited about it.

“Covenant” runs through October 17 at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. For tickets and more information, go to the Speakeasy Stage website at this link.