Lift Every Voice: BIPOC Play Festival Returns to Ccambridge Oct. 1-2

The Multicultural Arts Center kicks off its 2026-2027 season this week with the return of Lift Every Voice: BIPOC Play Festival, its signature program amplifying the work of BIPOC playwrights, poets, and spoken word artists.

The two-day festival, running Thursday and Friday, Oct. 1-2, features five new works by emerging and established playwrights, presented as staged readings and performances that span a wide range of voices, cultures, and storytelling traditions from across the BIPOC community.

Five new works take the stage

AAPI theater artist Michelle M. Aguillon brings Unwrapped, in which the loss of their mother brings three sisters together to finally face some truths — while waiting for their flakey fourth sister to show up.

Award-winning playwright, anthropologist, and interdisciplinary artist Hortense Gerardo presents an excerpt from Conditions of Readiness, a comic tragedy that follows Logan as she joins the Humanities faculty at a small New England college and learns about the new requirements for active-shooter preparedness.

Taiwanese-American theater artist Jamie Lin — a Bay Area transplant, member of Boston's Asian American Playwright Collective, and Company One C1 Co-Lab alum — offers Sibling Rivalry, set at a Taipei night market where siblings face off for victory in a shrimp skewering race, only to find themselves at a crossroads.

Boston-based theater artist Shay McQueenie, a Boston Conservatory graduate with a B.F.A. in Contemporary Theater, contributes the short play Peace Plan, in which a young Black girl struggles with her mental health and we see how this affects the people closest to her.

Rounding out the lineup, performer, director, dramaturg, writer, and theatre activist Ciera-Sadé Wade — who studied theatre at Boston University with a semester of classical training in London — presents Love & Hair, in which a mother and daughter come together to find self-acceptance and joy in who they are.

A season opener rooted in East Cambridge

Lift Every Voice is a signature program of the Multicultural Arts Center, the East Cambridge nonprofit dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion through the performing and visual arts. Located at 41 Second Street, the Center provides a platform for underrepresented artists, hosts community-driven programming, and creates space for dialogue and artistic collaboration.

The Multicultural Arts Center logo. Image provided by the Multicultural Arts Center.

At a glance