←Recommendations of Magellanica

Wow! This word has been used a few times to describe this play already, but Magellanica is the very definition of an epic. It is simultaneously poetic and scientific, personal and political, global and microcosmic expansive and claustrophobic all told through the voices of 8 unforgettable characters placed under extraordinary circumstances. Marrying scientific fact with theatrical magic and riveting storytelling Magellanica grabbed me from the very beginning and didn't let go until...well, it hasn't let go. I'm still consumed by it.

I read this play knowing that it shouldn't work - That it was too enormous in scope and theme, to logistically large, and too topical to be dramatic. I was wrong on every count. Ellen has done the impossible here. With "Magellanica", the playwright has achieved a level of dramatic alchemy that is almost unheard of, excluding perhaps the works of Tony Kushner or Paula Vogel. That a 250+ page play leaves the audience with a cliffhanger leaving us wanting more is just one of the many rabbits Ellen pulls out of her hat. A truly one-of-a-kind theatrical experience.

E. M. Lewis is my hero! In a time in which all the advice to playwrights is make it smaller; one set, no act breaks, small cast, she writes this beautiful and epic play that is the opposite of all of those things. The amount of research and specificity that went into this play is staggering. I laughed reading this play, I cried a lot reading this play, it is an urgent and essential piece of theater that should be being produced around the country right now. It has my highest recommendation.

It is a testament to the playwright that in a story about eight people who are trapped--by their inhospitable surroundings, by the limitations of the facilities, by their preconceptions about one another, and by their own feelings of inadequacy--Lewis finds a way to free each and every one of them. It is long, it is riveting, it is emotional, it is eye-opening. It is a masterpiece. Read this play. Produce this play. And if you happen to be somewhere it is playing, see this play.

I had the extraordinary opportunity to attend the world premier of this play at Artists Rep in Portland, OR. Lewis has created a prescient and revealing work, one that explores the very nature of what it means to be human on the edge of — A place of deep discovery and disconnect, of sheltering and isolation. Set in the mid-1980's, at a moment when it's revealed that we are entering a new era where we humans are changing the earth's atmosphere, what? When? How will change happen? This work is of and by and for our time. It is genius.

An amazing powerful epic

Truly epic in scale and heart. A journey that exposes the raw and delicate terrain of human relationships within the larger context of our relationship with the Earth. Its cartography includes wonderful, complex characters, delicious language, intrigue, pathos, humor, and danger, against the mysterious and harsh background of the Antarctic winter. Truly masterful writing. I hope to one day see a production of this important piece of theatre.

An absorbing, imaginative epic of climate change, science and Antarctic winter - with a complex, often comic and very human group of people. Moments of beauty and magic and song, and a wonderful setting for sound, lighting and set designers to stretch their skills. Sure look forward to seeing this onstage, and talking about it afterwards.

Wry wit, compelling characters, suspenseful circumstances, and complicated questions with the courage to resist pat answers, all offered in style that is the purest and most human kind of theatre. This is wonderful work.