←Recommendations of Drown

Heightened theatricality meets grounded, agonizing (and, believe it or not, often hilarious) honesty in this exploration of a father-son relationship following a mother and wife's suicide. This play successfully translates the disorientation of loss - the ways in which life is too normal, and the ways in which it may never feel normal again. It shifts seamlessly through time, showing us simple but sublime memories just when we need context. I also love that Bonita wasn't left out of her own story. Flaws abound, but they make these well-drawn characters painfully and gorgeously relatable. A meaningful and memorable play.

This play is a beautiful study on grief and depression, as well as capturing what it is to be thirteen years old so well. I would love to see a production of this, especially to see how the designers handle the underwater scenes. There's just enough humor to balance out the heavier moments, and surprisingly the parts that got me the most, emotionally, were moments when the characters couldn't or wouldn't put things into words. Storytelling at its finest.

A unique, honest look into the aftermath of suicide in a family that gets to the truth of it we rarely see. Well done.

This one has really stuck with me. I think what I love about it so much is the palpable balance between its lightest moments and its darkest ones. Hilder creates a very compelling and oddly charming allegory with the undersea journey Bonita finds herself on, which pairs nicely with the very rooted and relatable emotional journey that her loved ones must go on up on the surface in the wake of her sudden absence from their lives. Hope and despair are both present here, with neither one necessarily winning out over the other. Which is what leaves you thinking.

We had the pleasure of producing a workshop of this show in 2015 and, in the process, working with David directly. Both were extraordinary experiences. This is an important play that deals with grief and growth in surprising and beautiful ways. Our audiences were hooked from start to finish and, four years later, are still talking about it.

This is such a unique, poetic, and lyrical play. Some of my favorite surrealist scenes I've ever seen in a play, Will never forget that SHARK.

I think the best thing I can say about this play is that I think about it often. Its beauty has stuck with me in ways that have been formative and inspirational to my own work. I often find myself telling others working in similar genres to find a copy of this play and learn from it.

I was a fortunate observer to David’s reading of this play at the Great Plains Theatre Conf. What a beautiful, lyrical, and highly visual piece of theatre!

This is a heartbreaking, beautiful, and hopeful play about the emotional aftermath of suicide. The most unique element of the play is the journey of Bonita, the wife/mother who has left her family behind, as she navigates her own personal afterlife under the ocean. No less compelling is the above-the-surface story of Jeremy and Henry's attempt to reconcile themselves to the loss they've experienced. David has a knack for taking the gravest of subjects - in this case suicide, depression and healing - and giving them a theatrical spin that is equal parts lyrical, matter-of-fact and slyly funny.

I've read a lot of plays about suicide, but never one quite like this. I was taken by the journey of Bonita as she struggles to find her place after her jump from a pier; this is something we never see with so many plays focusing on the survivors. Hilder's juxtaposition of the journeys of Bonita and the husband and son she left behind are a poignant and troubling illustration of the notion of a "permanent solution." Is it--for anyone?