←Recommendations of You Are The Blood

A lot of unsettling themes and realities are explored here with a deft hand. Ashley Rose Wellman's eye for rendering complex characters navigating very particular forms of strife is fully employed here! Wellman's ability to juggle comedy with darkness is also so well utilized. Shelby is a compelling nucleus for the piece (in fact each of the characters is eternally fascinating and nuanced) and her journey is both hard to read about and handled with care. I appreciated that the ending felt like a messy and hopeful reminder that "normal," per se, isn't necessary for healing to begin.

If it isn't becoming obvious that I'm now a huge Ashley Rose Wellman fan, here's another review! What excites me most about these plays is how deep into the dark they go. Wellman picks the scab and digs around in there with a fork. This is family at its most dysfunctional. We don't have to understand all of these characters or even love them to accept them. They are who they are...even David, who is the hardest to understand of all. Also, great song reference/title!

When a connection is made, discoveries you never thought you'd have to sort through are revealed in this captivating play. Well done.

What if your dad was a serial killer? And what if said dad is now getting married to his prison pen pal, who is also a performance artist, who is also basically the same age as you? Oh, and did we mention that you're a struggling stand-up comedian? This darkly sexy play explores all that and more with humor, specificity, and deliciously tight pacing.

Complex characters, strong journey toward healing, and a lot of laughs - what more could you want? Theatrical Drama! Wonderful use of language! Epistolary (but only sometimes)! Would be wonderful to stage! Is so exciting I can't stop using exclamation points! !!

Stunning in its ability to take the audience on a journey at once utterly unfamiliar and yet deeply resonant. We recognize the shared humanity of people living lives we can barely imagine... a tour de force. Ashley Rose Wellman has a knack for finding the extremes and presenting them so simply, so true to life, that we find ourselves swept along, quietly nodding: Well, of course that's what it's like to grow up as the child of a convicted serial killer. How else could it be? This is an amazing play.

A captivating dark comedy that is at once hilarious and terrifying. This play perfectly blends humor while still respecting the fragility and complexity of the subject matter. A must-read and must-see for anyone interested in true crime and its repercussions.

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 YOU ARE THE BLOOD.

It is the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's pleasure to recommend Ashley Rose Wellman and their play You Are the Blood as a finalist for our 2017 National Playwrights Conference. The play rose through a competitive, anonymous, multileveled selection process that took nearly nine months to execute. As one of 55 finalists out of more than 1,300 submissions, the strength of its writing has allowed this work to prosper in such a competitive selection process. Our readers responded to the complex tones of the piece as well as the deep psychological foray into family dynamics and generational divides.

Saw a staged reading of this piece at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Alaska in 2016. One of the best pieces at the conference. Great characters, witty, painful, and wholly unique. For the odd person who enjoys both true crime and dysfunctional family comedies.