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Selected for 2021-22 Salon Reading Series, Angels Theatre Company
Safety Net chooses to focus on the lives of three women over a three week time frame in rural Alabama. It’s not an unexpected setting for a play concerning the opioid crisis; poor and rural communities seem to suffer disproportionately in these instances. By turning her focus on the impact of the opioid crisis on these three women, Fazio mirrors the feeling of helplessness inherent in dealing with disease and trauma. These three women are not representative; rather they speak as individuals amidst an event bigger than themselves. Beautifully done.

There is something stark and simple about Lauren Gunderson’s The Heath. It is theatre and storytelling in its most raw and honest format. It is messy, rough, strange, unfinished, and “meta” (really meta). However, to call this play meta-theatrical is at once accurate and overly simple. For, in telling this story, Lauren exposes her vulnerability and her fear as a playwright and as a grand-daughter. It is not a typical hackneyed or gimmicky meta-theatrical statement on the postmodern situation of the theatre as a whole, but a way of story-telling that is deeply personal, fundamentally revealing, and altogether beautiful.

The most intriguing aspect, and an apt description, of Fly Jamerson’s Frozen Fluid is the play’s subtitle: An Antarctic Gender Non-Conforming Creation Myth. It’s accurate, telling, and sets the proper expectations for an evening of theatre. And, like all great myths, Frozen Fluid is simultaneously personal and epic, drawing in its audience to the personal details that reveals an epic truth.

Digital remains. It’s an uncommon phrase, or perhaps an unlikely phrase, that evokes a feeling of cognitive dissonance. After all, digital is impermanent and temporal; remains are physical and lasting. And yet, the phrase clearly strikes a chord within us that causes some discomfort. The digital remains are simply the conduit through which the characters recognize and understand their relationship with the human. A millennial ghost story indeed. And, a deeply felt and important reminder of the relationships, digital and otherwise, that we leave behind.

Peter Mercurio’s Hatch is an uncomfortable play. It asks uncomfortable questions and puts its audience in the position of recognizing the consequences of firmly held beliefs. Dying with dignity gets a lot of press on the larger morality of the question. But, there is also a deeply personal conflict that lies at the surface of any decision regarding the life of a loved one. It’s beauty comes from it’s unflinching portrait of a family in the midst of discovery and recognition. It is anagnorisis on a family level–complex and beautiful as it is terrifying.

Brilliant Works of Art was chosen for inclusion in the Angels Theatre Company's Salon Reading Series 2020-21. May 2021

There is something of Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things on the surface of Donna Hoke's Brilliant Works of Art. Art, sex, intention, and meaning all intertwine to enrich and complicate the tenuous (but thrilling) connection between the artist and the work of art (on multiple levels). However, Hoke does not twist her plot by redefining a character's motives. Instead, she delves deeper into all three characters to reveal the internal twisting among themselves. Deeply disturbing, and deeply satisfying.

Included in the Angels Theatre Company's Salon Reading Series 2019: Song’s The Feast is an exploration of de-civilization that returns human beings to a primal urge to consume. What is remarkable is not the speed at which civilization breaks down, but the inherent fragility of civilization that holds humanity together. It takes little to crumble the artifice of manners. A crisis of supply and permission to allow one’s mind to wander is all it takes for the events of The Feast to set into motion. And, once in motion, the characters are alternatively unable or unwilling to stop it.

Steven Bogart's Pigcat was featured as the December reading in Angels Theatre Company's Salon Reading Series. Through a mixture of flashback and magical realism, Bogart places the audience in the mind of a pre-adolescent boy. Using this narrative style allows the audience to experience the action of the play through Freddy’s perspective, demonstrating a profound need for acknowledgement, acceptance, and an unwavering, albeit tragic, sense of hope. Freddy is desperate, with a sense of unease, ungroundedness, and unreliability. However, he also maintains a desperate untenable hope that something--anything will happen to rescue him. Highly recommended.