←Recommendations of Earworm

As a movement specialist, I thoroughly enjoy and appreciate this play! Not only does this play showcase relatable characters, but also provides interesting challenges in terms of actors playing anthropomorphic personifications of songs! A beautiful story of how songs impact us and make us deal with truths about ourselves. Colleges and universities should seek this play out for production!

Earworm is structurally unique and poetically beautiful, but that doesn't begin to describe how it touched my heart to read it. Cook has created something both incredibly specific and beautifully relatable in this piece in a way that surprised and moved me. I would love to see this staged -- there is so much potential in Cook's design choices, and it's sure to move an audience!

I got to see a workshop production of this show at Tesseract Theatre in St. Louis, and the script still sticks with me, just as its title suggests. A song weaves its way through a number of stories, with memorable characters, exciting representations of women and LGBTQ+ characters, and an ambitious formal structure that moves in and out of time with a huge payoff at the end. Definitely worth the read!

EARWORM is a play that sings! This play is beautifully written and the character of The Song strikes a ubiquitous chord in anyone who has ever had a song like "Candle's Out". This play looks at how music forms the past, the present, and (hopefully) the future. Cook creates a play that is brimming with raw emotion, and cathartic energy. This play deserves to be produced.

Playwrights Foundation enthusiastically recommends this play EARWORM, as a Semi-Finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2020. We were moved by the quality of the writing and the relevant and compelling themes that spoke to the mission of our festival. It excelled in a competitive process of 735 plays submitted this year and rose to the top after a six month long process discussing its merits with both national and local Bay Area readers, and we hope it moves swiftly towards production.

I got to see a reading of this play at Campfire, and it skyrocketed into being one of my favorite plays of all time. My love of punk rock music may make me biased, but truly this play is beautifully (and poetically) written. It is a love letter to music, growing up, and the songs that saved us while doing so.

I saw this play's reading at Campfire Theatre Festival and it honestly was one of my favorites of the weekend. I found myself humming "Candle's Out" after, thinking about the way songs can impact each of us so differently. Shualee has such a gift for taking something we think we know--songs--and making us think about their existences in a concrete, new way. I can't say enough about how great this play is! I laughed, I cried, I was angry, I was overjoyed, and by the end, I was rocking out with the whole cast. Bravo!

I was immediately drawn to this script from page one. The Song shines as an incredibly powerful character and one that, in some fashion, we've all met before. Our audiences at Campfire Theatre Festival were captivated by Shualee's script. I have half a mind to think that we all went home and listened to our own "Candle's Out" while taking a trip down memory lane. Thank you, Shualee!

Music is a powerful outlet. The right song can lift you up one second and tear you down the next and Candle’s Out is no different. Cook creates a world where Candle’s Out, a punk rock break up song, is personified on stage as The Song, a pivotal character in the lives of all those on stage. Earworm is a play where it's The Song who gets to describe the lives she has affected and reminds audiences the role music, which can be both cathartic and chaotic, can have a lasting impact on our lives.