←Recommendations of The PlayMakers

What happens when your characters take on a life of their own? Sebastian and Lisa find out when this writing team is brought together again some years after a breakup to collaborate on a new play. Their invented characters physically take the stage and interact, not only with each other, but with their playwright creators. This leads to head-spinning comedy for the audience and insight for our playwright protagonists. Zaffarano sets a high bar for creativity and comedic gold with The Playmakers.

What a giddy and engaging celebration of the vagaries of romance and of the creative process. The charming revelation at the end made me smile and go "Awwwwww." And the banking scenes are comic gold. This play would be a real treat to perform as well as to see performed.

This full length romantic comedy is set up so uniquely, I absolutely loved it! Lisa and Sebastian are exes, professionally and personally. They've reunited to write a new play, and the characters they create wander in and out of the scenes, interacting with each other and with Lisa and Sebastian as well. I loved it, and I would love to see it on its feet even more. The dialogue rings very true, with two people who know each other so well that they are able to push each other's buttons with barely any energy. What a sweet, interesting piece.

This is a romantic comedy, and not your typical romantic comedy! This would be so fun to stage with lots of great roles for multiple actors. The Zaffarano leaves the director, designers and cast plenty of room to make this their own and discover different and fun ways to break through the play within a play world.
A sweet and fun play a theatre would love to produce!

A marvelous reunion that takes us on a thoroughly engaging theatrical production of love in fiction and potentially reality. Well done!

A play within a play within a relationship within a play. And so it goes. Zaffarano offers us layers of real life mixed up with the theatrical. Can you tell which is which? Does it matter? The Playmakers mines comedy in relationships and love and you will also. A total delight for artists and audiences. What is real? What is theatre? It’s hard to say and in the end, it doesn’t matter. All’s fair in love.

This is a satisfying, imaginative romantic comedy. Going into the theater, an audience will know exactly how the personal and professional conflicts will end. But they won't know what paths the characters will take to reach a resolution, and that's a testament to Zaffarano's skills as a storyteller.

Zaffarano plays with theatricality in fun ways throughout this piece, which was a delight to read and is sure to be even more fun to see. There are great roles for older actors, a happy ending, and lots of flexibility - lots of good reasons to produce this script!

Zaffarano's The PlayMakers deserves its numerous awards. I can see this being a hit across the country at community theatres. Highly entertaining, energetic, hysterical, The PlayMakers focuses on collaboration (playmaking for a former writing duo) and relationship-building (Lisa and Sebastian were former lovers!) and creates a play-within-a-play -- really plays-within-a-play -- an unexpected meta-romantic-comedy. The theatre-of-the-mind, the actual collaborative writing process, is externalized on stage before it goes to the page, characters are revised, developed in new scenes -- and Zaffarano doesn't stop there, no: these characters are not puppets-on-strings, they react to their makers. Great work!

In The PlayMakers, Julie Zaffarano's clever story concept and non-stop wit are pure joy. When I read it, it moved at such a fast-pace (except when I stopped for belly-laughs) and I totally understand why it's winning awards and productions. Congratulations, Julie Zaffarano! This is a true gem.