The Never-Ending Debts of True Friendship: Becca Carter Freeman’s Meet Me in Five by Lola Kennedy

On Saturday, August 8th, 2026, I had my friend and constant collaborator Becca Carter Freeman over to my new apartment. She brought me a bottle of wine and a card as my birthday was in two days. She told me I smelled good, which honestly meant a lot, because when we used to live together, she would scold me for sitting on her bed with smelly feet. 

I met Becca at summer camp when I was 14, and she was 16. I can’t recall meeting her and instantly becoming friends, as I can't recall the passing friendships from that time; mostly I remember that everyone thought we were related. We became true friends later on in camp, when, during a rehearsal of Catch Me If You Can , the musical, she had a vertigo spell and I offered to take her to health services. Later on, when we wound up at the same high school, the roles were reversed; I’d ask her to come with me to sit by the lake, and she would hold me in her arms while I cried.

As I reflect upon these acts, I see them as increasingly symbolic beginnings to our friendship. We have always had a clear sense of what it means to be a good friend. She is one of the only people in my life I can say, without a doubt, shares my definition of friendship. There was a time in college when she let me live in her apartment for free, and another time when I would wake her up every morning at 8 am to make sure she got to class. I never thought of either of those things as being absurd in the landscape of friendships, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen that having unwavering support is actually quite rare. Although some may think that looking at a friendship as a never-ending list of debts to be repaid is problematic, I understand now that it is quite beautiful. We both owe so much to one another that at this point there is no favor we wouldn’t do, and nothing we wouldn’t ask of the other.

We’ve also never fought over a boy, which is of course not necessarily a stipulation of female friendship. But when you’ve known a girl for over ten years, it feels somehow like a milestone. 

Though we have seen many friendships end over a boy, we've learned that it is often not the boy who ends the friendship. As Becca’s dad Trey says: “A relationship ending over the dirty dishes is never actually about the dirty dishes.” In the case of Becca’s play Meet Me in Five, a friendship ending over a boy might actually just be about the dirty dishes. 

This idea is much of what makes the play so compelling. As the moral framework for being a good person shifts drastically, it has become an increasingly bizarre time to be a friend. Especially within the locale of this play, the fall of 2022. 

We spoke about Meet Me in Five, our complicated feelings toward the girl play, and what it means to be a true friend. 

Lola: So, let me begin this by saying that before you and I lived together. You lived in such a beautiful apartment.

Becca: It was beautiful. 

And it was a staple not just for you and the 4 other girls who lived there. Everyone knew that Brookline apartment building. 

Our head of marketing, Annabelle, lived there too! 

Yes! It was a landmark building within the Boston University apartment landscape. And you guys were big hosts. I remember the first week of my freshman year coming over; I was sitting in your room, two of your roommates burst in drunk post-frat darty, and I thought: “Oh my god these girls are so cool.” 

Which is so funny because that is literally how the play starts. 

But it seemed to me like a very grown-up apartment.

I think on paper it was. We put a lot of effort into making it a beautiful space. Which I do think is such social capital as a woman in college: being able to have people over to a nice apartment. We hosted a lot. But also on a more philosophical level, it’s the first time you get full autonomy over your room, your space, way more than a dorm. It reflects like I have my shit together. 

I mean, I thought that about all of you. 

Which is so funny for reasons we can get into, but it is so important, right? [Your space] is one of the first things people see about you in college. So think about when a group of people has a nice space, it metastasizes. But so do the fucked up things. 

That building is such a metaphor for the play

Yeah, because it was so stunning and grown up, but it had real issues. 

Like the rats. 

Like the rats. 

In comparison to the apartment you and I lived in, which was kind of a shit hole.

But we only had mice. 

Right.

It was a completely different vibe. And it was way worse on paper: a worse neighborhood, not as clean, and you and I weren’t even supposed to be living there. Us being there- it was post-COVID; it was an accident. It was the opposite of the Brookline apartment, but I ended up really loving living there. 

Me too. And on that, why do you think our friendship survived living together compared to the girls in the play?

Probably because we weren’t attached at the hip. We had a lot of friends outside of living together. There was less room for failure because we weren’t spending every waking moment together. 

We were in different grades. But then, at the end of the day, we would come home and still have so much fun. I slept in your bed most nights.

I mean, that is what is great about living with your friends in college; we literally had a sleepover every night. We would stay up until 4 am giggling about nothing. 

Remember the can of Greylock?

Literally the hardest I’ve ever laughed, and it was a can rolling down the street. But it is funny because I think when you move into an apartment which is borderline disgusting, you have an expectation about what that living scenario will be like. And I had just as much fun in that apartment as I did in the Brookline apartment, the beautiful one. Like you and I literally bordered a rat-infested dumpster, and it didn’t matter because I had you to scare them away on our walks home from rehearsal. We still hosted parties, we still snuck boys in; it didn’t matter. So any ideas I had before about having a grown-up apartment totally flew out the window by the time you and I lived together. 

That was a childish apartment. It was so fun.

I think the first few years of college you still have this silliness about you. I mean in both apartments I was literally a kid in a castle. All of a sudden you can drink and break rules, but what is hard is the consequences. We were kids at summer camp without a counselor. 

Which is fun until it’s not. 

Right. It can be dangerous. 

What did your first grown-up apartment teach you?

Those girls taught me everything. I was scared to turn on the stove; I didn’t know how to cook an egg. 

We did go to boarding school.

Yep. So we were very independent in some ways. But they all came from families that had concrete traditions, which mine did not. They had all been like drinking cocktails with their parents and eating fancy cheese; I knew nothing. There were so many habits I picked up from that first apartment which, to this day, are still ingrained in me. 

Like never doing someone else’s dishes.

Yes, one of the girls I lived with had that rule, and I adopted it. I still am that way. We stole so much from one another. I mean, we were so close to one another, physically of course, but everything was shared, both literally and metaphorically. 

Attached at the hip.

Right. Which can create a false sense of closeness too, because there was still so much we didn’t know about one another. But we assumed we knew everything. That’s what got us in trouble when someone surprised us, when someone leapt out of the imaginary character we had created for them. 

Which, I don’t want to talk about men, but.

We have to - I was thinking the other day about whether or not this play passes the Bechdel test. 

It definitely does. 

Yeah, but it’s a little too close for a play with 5 women and 1 man who is in 3 scenes. But I think as a young woman, even if you are queer, the male gaze is still so felt.

And, we’ve spoken so much about this, but there are so many female friendships which unfortunately have ended due to a man. The most feminist women I know have succumbed to it. 

Which goes back to that false sense of closeness. Because you never imagine that your friend would do something like that. That’s why it can be such a big deal; it is a concrete way to realize that a friend might not be who you thought they were. But it also is just conditioning that men are often the final straw. Obviously, we are thinking in a super heteronormative way, but specifically in college, let’s be honest, as women in your 20s, so much of your value is based on who is attracted to you. Not even necessarily in a romantic sense. So, you can be feeling disrespected in a friendship because of the dishes, or not taking out the trash, or like a weird comment about the outfit you want to wear. But then your friend oversteps a boundary with a guy? Especially if that is where your sense of validation is coming from, it’s a glaringly obvious act of disrespect. And it’s active, not passive in the way women sometimes can be.

Also, I think women hold our female friendships to a very high standard. 

Of course, because the expectation is women should know how to care. Which is obviously unfair because we should expect the same thing from the men in our lives. Specifically within that apartment, we held each other to such a high standard. I mean it’s interesting because I think there is this notion… like, are you a bad woman because you are a bad friend? It’s a totally different expectation, which just doesn’t exist for men.

It’s like, we hold one another to a very high standard, but that’s because it should hypothetically come quite easily to us; being a good friend. And on the other side of that because our friendships mean so much, it does take quite a lot for women to write their friends off.

I think that’s why the guy thing is often the final straw, because there have likely already been things which have probably pissed you off, so all of a sudden it becomes this multitude of disrespect. 

What about male friendships?

I don’t know, man; I don't understand male friendships. Like, I know guys who have remained friends with the guy who their girlfriend cheated on them with. 

It’s a totally different standard. I was thinking about [redacted] the other day and how there was a time when all three of them lived together, and I had kissed all three. Do you think they just don’t care?

I mean, I think it says more to me that they are not willing to communicate, not willing to open up. The other, darker thought is maybe they just value a woman’s opinion of them less? Less than we might value a man’s opinion. But I think they just don’t know how to communicate… bottom line, I don’t understand how their friendships work. 

Write a play about that 

That’ll be next. 

There’s also a lot of shame around it; I think if you let your female friendship end over a guy. 

I mean it is kind of shameful. It looks so bad when a woman steals another woman’s man or whatever, but like of course the problem with that is the woman is the one who is blamed. Both sides are shameful And, I mean, it was important that this wasn't a female empowerment play, because it is the truth that women often blame other women instead of the man. 

On the female empowerment notion, let’s talk about the girl play. 

Fuck a girl play.

My thoughts exactly. In some ways, though, this is a foray away from the girl play. Because the girl play is typically set in high school. You do have one of those: Daughters, which is my favorite play of yours. 

Thank you.

But, I mean, I have a lot of opinions about girl plays. I am very grateful for them, that they have allowed female playwrights to take up more space culturally. But I always feel a little irked that, in theatre and in the general American art world, the most popular women’s stories are currently focused on a time in a woman's life when she is taken the least seriously. Are audiences more able to accept these plays because they themselves don’t need to take the issues as seriously?

I mean… Who knows. But I guess it is telling that this play, which is not the play I would have expected to be the one to get made first, is the one getting a production. The girl play is very in right now. And of course I would like to think this is because people want to hear women’s stories, but also I think it’s likely that it’s because women do, and women are so much of the theatre-going audience these days. Women make theatre money, so with the girl play, the theatre industry has just found a way to make money. 

But to your credit, I do think MMI5 slips right into the rest of your canon. You’re not succumbing to the girl play industrial complex.

My canon is so funny.

You have one: Daughters, MMI5, Landed, Peaches, Welcome Home. That’s gotta be a canon. 

I guess I have a canon. 

But your plays, to me, all of them are about Agency. Landed, is about a group of people in flight attendant training school exploring what it means to be in a vocation which gives you little to no agency, Daughters, is about the daughters of the american revolution, the lack of agency felt by young women in the south, even your first play Peaches, which is deeply autobiographical, exploring being from two places, South Korea, and America, what it means to not have agency over your home. 

See, that’s nice to hear. To have someone see a throughline in my work. 

It’s true. And with MMI5 - living with other people is a sure-fire way to feel a lack of agency over your own life. 

Well, also I think so much of this period in your life is about discovering your own autonomy, right? Like what we were talking about with their space. The girls are discovering what this means for their lives, friendships, bodies, and even technology. But it’s so interesting to be having that experience, which is so individual, within a group. And I just really feel like that’s what this play is about. When they stand up for themselves, when they are part of the pack, how they want their bodies to be treated, but all within this collective environment. Which is what having roommates does; it’s a mirror to your daily life, you always have a witness. That’s really what this moment is for these girls. 

That was good. Can you- I have to ask. Everyone who watches this play immediately chooses a girl they are most like. You once described me as a mix of Harper / Sascha - If you know, you know. So, who do you think you are most like?

I mean, people have always pointed to these characters and said this is so-and-so, but really they are each 5 different reflections of myself. At that time, and also now, in hindsight, through the years. 

Wait, let’s figure this out: your timeline of being like each girl- I mean, there was a time when I knew you when you were such a Sascha, which I think many people would find shocking now.

Yep, when I was using metal straws but not taking Advil, I was definitely Sascha. I think it probably went like 

Lucie, 17/18 – Sascha 18/19 – Remi 19/20 – Harper 20-22 – Ingrid 22 - onwards. 

It’s so funny you are Ingrid now. I remember when I heard this play out loud for the first time, your senior year of college in our backyard. There is no way I thought you would ever become her. 

And now here we are!

Here we are. It goes without saying, but of course I am so happy to have you as a friend. I really believe if our friendship hasn't ended yet, it probably won’t. 

Meet Me in Five runs September 10th - 19th. Becca’s play is amazingly sold out, but there is standing room available.

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cherubsproductions/