I love the open way Stout presents the piece for so many voices and how abruptly the end comes creating such a terror out of joy! It could be done so many ways onstage. Stout clearly has a very strong sense of the theatrical!

Definitely a piece that's begging to be staged, based on poetry, and with so much poetry in its DNA, [IN JUST-] A WHISTLE is short and mesmerizing. With imagery that pulled me back to childhood, and the haunting ever-presence of the "balloon-man" Stout weaves through innocence and gives us hints of it's impending end.

Stout shows us quite masterfully how a brief, dense, somewhat cryptic poem can be transformed into a highly theatrical event. Giving us the points of view of the girls, the boys, and their parents... along with the foreboding presence of the balloonman, heightens the intensity of the storytelling. It’s hard to read it without hearing the rhythms and tempos (some from the source material, much more from Stout’s creative well.) I’d love to see (and hear!) a team of actors perform this. It has the potential to be absolutely haunting.