speaking strictly for me by Sarah Jae Leiber

a one-act songfic about folk singers who resemble joan baez and bob dylan

also, a play with music about heartbreak, history, and two people who don't know how to talk about what they did to each other.
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speaking strictly for me

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  • Rob Silverman Ascher:
    19 May. 2023
    “ A short, tense exploration of the mythology behind one of folk music's greatest legends. Or maybe it just happens to be two songwriters named joanie and dylan. regardless, these are people who keep their heads in their own poetry and, as a result, don't know how to reveal themselves to each other.

    speaking strictly for me is like reading the liner notes of a relationship after its demise. Sarah Jae Lieber has painted a portrait of a couple tied by the inevitability of losing each other. ”
  • Sam Heyman:
    18 May. 2023
    “ Sarah Jae Leiber has created a beautiful, poignant song-for-the-stage about two people, two beautiful souls, yearning to be heard, and to hear the truth of their experiences spoken back to them in a language they understand.

    "speaking strictly for me" will speak to anyone who has loved someone and has struggled to find closure in some mutual truth that stubbornly refuses to be brought to the surface. You don't have to know Dylan or Joanie before reading this play, but by the end, you will. And it will break your heart all over again. ”
  • Samuel Langellier:
    17 May. 2023
    “ If you aren't one for the references, the reverences will still strike a chord as Sarah Jae Leiber spins together her own folktale across a time and distance where the words and worlds fall away and fact may become mythtaken.

    Not just to do it, but to duet it, the one act balances the parts of Dylan and Joanie and how passions and singing singled them out from one another. Reminders of the past aren't always enough when we want to find another person's words within our lives and to know what words they have for us, broken or not. ”

Joanie — (mid-twenties) "she's got everything she needs / she's an artist"
Dylan — (much older) "you who are so good with words / and at keeping things vague"