Bristol Community College’s resident theater company, BCC THEATRE REP, opens its 22nd season with MATCHSTICKS – A Box of Brief Flare-ups, Friday, September 28, and Saturday, September 29, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10 for the general public and $5 for students and seniors.

Matchsticks will be a night of firsts, according to Artistic Director Rylan Brenner. The show will be the first performed in the College’s new Studio Theatre, an intimate, small scale performing space installed in the College’s Jackson Arts Center on the Fall River Campus.

It will also feature premieres of four plays written by BCC students in a playwriting course taught by Brenn last spring. Students Chad Lawton, Kristy Lienczewski, Edmond Allard, and Timothy Nicoletti have “tens,” or 10-minute plays, that will be performed for the first time.

Other playwrights are also featured, invited by Brenn to share their work, including Holly L. Jensen of Providence, Robert A Anderson from New Bedford, and Elliot Baker of Boston. A director Brenn mentored as part of his fellowship at last year’s American College Theatre Festival at the Kennedy Center, Chris Mandia from Tulane University, has also shared a piece to be staged.

While they are a diverse collection of works, they carry a similarity, Brenn said. “Each piece offers a short depiction of a life situation that flares, or explodes,” he said.

Matchsticks will be followed this semester with the BCC Theatre Rep’s mainstage production, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, November 16, 17, and 18. It is performed in honor of Shakespeare scholars and Professor of English Dr. Alan Powers, who plans to retire at the end of this semester.

For more information, please call BCC THEATRE REP at (508) 678-2811, x.2442.