This play has everything: song, dance, puppetry, magic, and at its center a heartbreaking story of a child trying to hold her world together using the only powers she understands. I love how Breathing In The Rain makes the world around an old FEMA trailer so large -- full of menace but also the tender possibilities of love. Stout gifts directors and designers with tremendous theatrical possibilities, and she gifts the audience with a lead character they won't soon forget.

This is a beautiful and quiet play about growing up in the aftermath of a big catastrophic event. With an exceptionally well-drawn young protagonist, Breathing in the Rain explores what it means to do everything in your power to hold your family and your life together when so much of the world is out of your control. Magical elements and puppetry truly highlight the gorgeous imagery inherent in Callan's writing.

A heartbreaking, haunting look at traumatic events and the way they can affect a family. From the perspective of children left alone in the aftermath of catastrophe, magic and the mysteries of the adult world are interchangeable and indistinguishable, and who are we to say there is really any difference? Same goes for monsters, and the very real threat of looming adults. Highlighting the frustration and loneliness of what it means to be a child with not control, this play manages to provide spectacle and whimsy at the same time it breaks your heart.