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FRIENDS WITH GUNS by Stephanie Alison Walker

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Recommendations

  • Jerry Polner:
    12 Apr. 2020
    “ Stephanie Alison Walker pushes all the buttons in our head that make us recoil when we meet people who disagree with us about firearms in America. This brilliant play hits so hard because it’s not about the policy. It’s about the people. Read it! ”
  • Michael Shutt:
    26 Mar. 2020
    “ Friends With Guns achieves the near impossible.It's a play about a huge, timely, and contentious issue that makes you forget you're watching an Issue Play. Walker's strength lies in telling her story in the most microcosmic and human way possible. She focuses on her characters, not the issue. She gives us four rich, complicated, and completely relatable characters, that at first you think you know, but who eventually reveal themselves to be not so easily pegged. The only thing more surprising than the ending was the fact that I walked away from this questioning my own beliefs. ”
  • Kyle J. McCloskey:
    16 Mar. 2020
    “ An expertly crafted exploration into a complicated issue. Never felt overdramatic, but rather this plays leans into the truth on both sides of the debate regarding gun violence, the right to protect one’s self, and other issues that I won’t list out of potential SPOILERS. What an ending. One of the best endings to a play I’ve read in a while. A perfect play for the moment we are in now, where we constantly must engage with the question: What is the Right to Life?

    Produce this play!!! ”
  • Martha Steketee:
    19 Feb. 2020
    “ A strong premise that's overly familiar (liberals dealing with guns) and yet the playwright offers intriguing surprises in the execution. In a scenario that feels like it might evolve into the anti-vaxxer granola world of helicopter parenting, with a bit of GOD OF CARNAGE thrown in, two sets of parents travel new ground. How much do new friends know about one another? The playwright intertwines themes of power and control and gun violence in important ways. ”
  • Franky Gonzalez:
    30 Aug. 2019
    “ What can I say that hasn't already been said about this amazing play by Stephanie Alison Walker? It has compelling dialogue, it calls for a very long--and difficult--look at the deeply held beliefs and their potential for warping into toxic obsession and masculinity. Both in seeing the play in production and in reading it, I was left wondering about some of my own deeply held beliefs and began analyzing what my positions were and whether I held those beliefs with sincerity or with more sinister purpose. It's a gut-check of a play that will leave you debating long after reading. ”
  • Patricia Milton:
    23 Mar. 2019
    “ With terrific, easy dialogue, and relatable characters, this play is smartly crafted to bring us to the edge of terror at the close. Powerful even in reading, and I imagine it will be even more in production. Well done. ”
  • Sarah Tuft:
    20 Mar. 2019
    “ FRIENDS WITH GUNS is a powerful portrait of progressive parents in the era of polarization and post-Trump panic. Especially poignant is its portrayal of a mother’s isolation, out of which grows her desperation for adult company. Equally truthful is the play’s portrait of that timeless need of married couples to “couple” with other married couples. FRIENDS WITH GUNS veers toward satire but only briefly as a sort of gotcha for what lies ahead. Because, there is an obstacle to all this kumbaya. It explodes, along with all the other carefully constructed tensions in this nail-biter of a play. ”
  • InterAct Theatre Company:
    16 Oct. 2018
    “ FRIENDS WITH GUNS was a finalist for InterAct's inaugural New Play Development Award. Out of a record-breaking 432 submissions, FRIENDS WITH GUNS stood out to us through its specific characters and its clever, surprising, feminist approach to gun ownership. ”
  • Eugene O'Neill Theater Center:
    25 Sep. 2018
    “ It is the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's pleasure to recommend Stephanie Alison Walker and their play Friends With Guns as a finalist for our 2018 National Playwrights Conference. The play rose through a competitive, anonymous, multileveled selection process that took nearly nine months to execute. As one of 53 finalists out of more than 1,4200 submissions, the strength of its writing has allowed this work to prosper in such a competitive selection process. ”
  • A.J. Allegra:
    6 Sep. 2018
    “ Friends with Guns is a fresh, funny, surprising, and powerful new play. It feels like a play we need right now and I sincerely hope to see it produced all over the country. ”

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