←Recommendations of the day we were born

This play is pure poetry. Bates explores the heartbreaking experiences of these characters on both a global and a personal scale, leaving the play with a lot of important issues to explore and digest.

The reality that these Native Americans face is presented in painful detail. They know the pains in their own culture to be, at least, understandable and necessary for survival. The ritualistic poetry spoken close to their own language brings the spiritual in view. This is a one of a kind view of a changing world that is tolerated through the lens of nature. Any one of these features makes for a great play that must be seen

I just finished reading this play and it is hard to find adequate words to describe how beautiful and exciting and immense this play is. This play is its own enormous, beautiful, white whale. Bates' writing is fantastically theatrical, haunting, poetic, real, and the stories being threaded here are all at once incredibly important and heartbreaking and funny and necessary. I would LOVE to see this play in a production that can meet Bates' writing. Thank you for sharing this play with us, Jaisey!

"There is palpable energy in the undercurrent in this play. The use of ritual and poetry in combination with striking imagery leaves you breathless. There is not a moment wasted in the play. Qi and Benny are characters who are complex and messy in ways that make you love them infinitely. This play is channeling something ancestral in every sumptuous word.

The exquisite play is visionary! I've rarely been so fully wrapped up in the unique visual/aural world of a piece just by reading it. The language is both spare and profound, and Bates explores so much here, but really anchoring our empathy in the two-sided nucleus of Qi and Benny. The multi-faceted use of theater as ritual, performance, and poetry is striking. All of the theatrical details--choral/ensemble moments, direct-address third person of Raven, repetition, song--are somehow both eclectic and cohesive. The final coda at the end of the play is a poignant, effective punctuation mark. Beautiful!

This poetry and passion of this play are extraordinary. It is rare for a piece to have this kind of power in visual and literary terms.

Amazing, visceral moments: Qi watching a cigarette burn his fingers, the whale knife quivering to a stop.

What a special, special piece.

This play needs to be produced. The magic, the breathlessness, and the power of this play - stunning! Beautiful, lyrical, and yearning to be seen/heard/felt - an event with the strength to move audiences hearts and minds.

This play is probably one of the most remarkable and important plays of the century. We should all read it. I hope it will be produced everywhere and often and become part of the canon because it is an urgent and appealing, beautifully written and conceived theatrical event for all of us. Not to be missed!

This play this play this play. So funny. So beautiful and wrenching. So theatrical. I'm so happy to have found this play and I'm excited to read the rest of Jaisey's work. I look forward to seeing this show on stage.

This play was a SEMIFINALIST for the 2017-2018 In-Progress New Play Reading Series at Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. It is our pleasure to support THE DAY WE WERE BORN.