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Recommendations

Recommendations

  • Alex Cafe:
    24 Jan. 2024
    Smoke and Mirrors represents and interesting take on the difficulties of letting go and moving on. Frandsen encapsulates the struggle of understanding that, while a person may be gone, their influence on lives cannot be understated. Excellently done.
  • Paul Donnelly:
    7 Apr. 2022
    Smoke and Mirrors is a poignant play of compelling humanity. The characters are richly drawn and sympathetic even when their needs and intentions are at odds. The central narrative about letting go is enriched by revelatory excursions into the characters' lives and pasts. This is ultimately a wise and moving play about love, its pain and its joy.
  • Ky Weeks:
    8 May. 2021
    A play that delves into the hard necessity of letting go, while also being a poignant acknowledgement of the need to keep holding on, to keep struggling despite the pain it causes. Frandsen writes characters who fervently wish to communicate each other, and yet, through many layers of distance, from emotional to metaphysical, cannot.
  • Jack Levine:
    9 Jan. 2021
    CHELSEA FRANDSEN's play is well-written. I found the relationships and inter-dynamics of the brothers, Dayton and Cal, and the other characters, who play an important role in their lives, to be emotional, sweet, and compelling. "Smoke and Mirrors" is a play well-worth reading and should be a big hit with audiences on Zoom or onstage.
  • Dave Osmundsen:
    11 Apr. 2020
    This poignant, devastating, and thought-provoking piece is a play that trusts its audience. The non-linear storytelling works in allowing the story and world-building to come out bit by bit, allowing the audience to put the pieces together. This accumulation of information makes for a satisfying theatrical experience. This play will get audiences thinking about the difference between living and existing, and should be an important conversation piece in the "right to die" dialogue. But it also has an intense humanity, because Frandsen clearly loves her characters so much.
  • Maximillian Gill:
    4 Mar. 2020
    A wonderful meditation on love, life, and letting go. The dialogue is sharp and direct yet also amazingly expressive and perceptive about the inner emotional states of the characters. In less confident hands the mixing of characters in the “living” world and those in the world “beyond” could easily get muddled, but Frandsen keeps everything clear and visual so that the reader is never confused. The dramatic flow is tight, never an ounce of fat or a wasted line. The resolution is completely earned. Impressive work overall.
  • Brad Dell:
    3 Mar. 2020
    What a GORGEOUS play! The very theatrical structure and complex characters beautifully keep the heavy subject matter from veering into melodrama or after school special. The relationships are compelling. And Frandsen effortlessly and brilliantly takes the audience nonlinearly through time, space, and states of being while posing profound questions and insights about life, death, and the time in between. It's a perfect play for High School or College age performers with very minimal design requirements.
  • Chris Gacinski:
    28 Feb. 2020
    This poignant one-act delivers chills and tears with its heartbreaking ontological examination of euthanasia and losing a loved one. Frandsen’s monologues would be fantastic for an audition, but this piece overall deserves to be seen and staged.
  • Stephen Kaplan:
    5 Feb. 2020
    A fascinating examination of euthanasia and all of its multifaceted complications. Frandsen humanizes the issue and focuses in on how grief impacts everyone involved.
  • Nick Malakhow:
    27 Dec. 2019
    This is a tender-hearted and intimate play about loss, love, family, and grief. Frandsen has created five three dimensional characters who earn our sympathy as we see them struggle to grapple with and accept tragedy. The spare theatrical world allows us to focus sharply on these individuals and their relationships. The fluidity of time also keeps the pace of the play both meditative and continually progressive. I would love to see this moving play on its feet!

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