←Recommendations of Alabaster

It's an eloquent and heart-rending exploration of tactics for dealing with loss and trauma, and the role of art in enabling or hindering recovery. But it's also a thorny, absorbing, and often very funny story about four brave and damaged women, two of whom just happen to be goats.

I will add my two cents to the avalanche of well-deserved praise for this play. I watched Know Theater's online performance of Alabaster, about two women damaged and isolated by loss and grief but beginning to heal each other with the help of goats. Goats! How awesome. It's a beautiful play, with complex and powerful characters, but the goats help it land with such force. They highlight the devastating effects of isolation (you know you're in trouble when you talk to goats and they talk back), and they allow the unspeakable to be spoken, which is how healing begins.

What a treat to be able to read an intro to the script here! Then I found out about Know Theatre's live streaming option as well. Thank you, Audrey Cefaly, for making your work accessible in these fraught times.
What an absolutely beautiful story of female beauty and resiliency. The rolling world premiere may have been interrupted, but this is definitely a play worth living on stage for years to come!

I had the privilege of seeing this play at Kitchen Dog Theater last night and I am so very glad I did. This play is absolutely gorgeous. This play will stay with me for quite some time; it is a beautiful meditation on grief, PTSD, and healing. I look forward to reading more of Audrey's work. Her work is important and must be produced.

It’s easy to see why this play is getting the huge rolling world premiere it so well deserves. We get deep, deep into these characters, and their wounds and their longing, and loss. There is hope. And even more importantly, it’s one of those scripts that when you read it, you think, “I really want to see this fleshed out on stage, in three dimensions, and see what a great cast and team will do with it.” I hope to see it someday soon.

I couldn't wait for the Rolling World Premiere at Oregon Contemporary Theatre this season. I had to read this play - now. And what a play! Cefaly dives into grief and its aftereffects with unflinching insight and rewards us throughout with belly-laugh humor. It's breathtaking, heartbreaking, an instant classic. Read it before it disappears from NPX, which I'm sure it will be, snapped up for publication and/or more prizes. This play is an absolute stunner, and a showcase for women actors. Brava!

While the emotional journeys of June and Alice are central, it's Cefaly's attention to craft and structure that make the script stand out. The Alabama farmhouse is not an insularity, but intimately connected in surprising ways to a world that also includes NYC and Pakistan. Its themes of trauma and overcoming through acts of creativity are reflected the June's painting, Alice's photojournalism, and Cefaly's own experiments in fourth-wall breaking magical realism and strong sense of mythology.

This is a play I would love to see performed. The characters feel so fully formed, the stories they tell astronomically hard, yet we see them struggling to free themselves from their griefs, mostly via art. To say that feels intensely reductive - the play is way beyond this description. Read it. I highly recommend it.

I was so incredibly warmed by this piece. It's such a beautiful exploration of pain, grief, and how we choose to deal with the horrors life thrusts upon us. It reminds me of a quote, "pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." Additionally, Ms. Cefaly uses humor in ways that had me literally laughing out loud as I was reading it. Beautiful work, one of the most touching pieces I've found in a long time. An absolute must-read.

A play that is as stunning, surprising, and funny as it is rich and deeply affecting. A heart-breaking and affirming exploration of how the pain we suffer shapes us, holds us back, and can maybe move us forward. Audrey Cefaly uses time, space, language, time (and goats) in ways that force you to rethink how story and structure work. And the deep need for art is woven into this play's fabric. Gorgeous work.