←Recommendations of Swimming While Drowning

What a beautiful, tender play filled with so much humor and humanity. Angelo and Mila are compelling characters with urgent needs and wants and you can't help but feel so deeply for both. The conflict between the two characters manages to be skillfully and compellingly drawn, and the struggles they face are not shied away from, but Rodriguez never loses the sense of gentleness and love for and between them. The mix of naturalistic, organic dialogue and the world of lyrical poetry is also amazing as well. I hope this continues to get produced far and wide.

A brilliant work of theater by an incredible writer on the rise. Emilio's characters are the sort you dream of putting on stage. Equal parts rough and sweets, their journey together will keep you not he edge of your seat. Not because this is a thriller, but because you want to know what happens to them. There's a reason it has so much buzz.

I've taught this play for 4 semesters and I've directed a staged reading of it at my university. Across the board, my students love this play and are always asking me when a full production is happening in our area. It's sweet. It's tender. It's poignant. It's also really funny. More importantly, stories about LGBT youth of color are often untold or go unnoticed. Theatre such as "Swimming While Drowning" can open up people's eyes and hearts.

In this tender, thoughtfully-developed play, young Mila and Angelo heal old wounds and explore an uncertain future while riffing through the present. Writer Rodriguez juxtaposes down-to-earth dialogue with heightened — yet accessible — poetry. Such a kinship between these teens, who each change and grow organically and without a false step. It's easy to love these two characters and this play.

A stunning play, Emilio's voice is full of passion and fire.

"Swimming" is a lovely, lyric dance of dialogue between two teens in a shelter for LGBT youth. Rodriguez employs performance poetry to move the story forward, not merely as commentary on the action, but to take emotional leaps forward in the relationship between these two young men.

The poems within this beautiful script are striking, sharp and truthful - sublime moments in the ebb and flow of difficult negotiations in a shared room. The heart of the play can be found in these lines: "But fixing is not the same / as un-breaking. And un-breaking is not the same / as never having been broken at all."

It’s not a happy ending, but an ending with a mix of realistic hope and grief.