←Recommendations of Wayfinding

One of the best plays I've ever read.

A darkly beautiful tale filled with longing and regret, but with the warmest ray of hope peeking over the horizon.

A gripping tale, cellular and celestial, boundlessly imaginative yet so achingly *human* - Rowland's play unfolds like a mystery, each page asking questions and pulling me deeper into the world. There's a symphonic quality to what she pulls off here, the rise of tensions, the pace and reveals. It's spacious and close - The way, in the days and weeks and months (and years) after a loss, the world, the sky, the day, looks different. Just a beautiful piece.

When dealing with so much pain, loss and self-sabotage the weight of being human gets to you. Until that is, a terrible crash brings some unexpected magic leading these two through heartbreak towards a fresh start, a beautiful journey of connection and aliveness. Lovely.

Wow! Beautiful, funny, heartbreaking work that bends genre/reality while still being immensely human. Rowland explores grief, relationships, and emotional self-sabotage with two nuanced, complex central characters. I was most amazed at the tightrope walk between hilarity and tragedy that this play navigated throughout. The surprising yet seamless transitions, dreamlike moments, and at times heightened text and world also felt supremely theatrical--the bold stage pictures stuck with me and made me yearn to see this on its feet in the hands of a creative director and design team. A wonderful challenge for artists on and offstage alike.

A magical, time-bending, heartbreaking, dramatic tapestry.

I had the pleasure of sitting in a workshop room for this play and every moment of this script is a delicious blend of comedy and heartbreak. There is nothing I like more than a play that uses magic to illustrate a deep interior human experience. This play does just that.

Magical realism that bleeds off the stage and into your heart. These terribly human characters working through tragedies and losses big and small make their pain make so much sense, and Rowland navigates this fraught landscape of self-destruction, grief, and the pain of being known with absolute ease. This is a play that makes emotional storytelling look so easy -- and that's not an easy feat.

I had the opportunity to see a staged reading of this beautiful and unique script at The Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez. It is sad, funny, and completely magical. I very much hope that I have the opportunity to see a full production in the future.

It is the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's pleasure to recommend Whitney Rowland and their play WAYFINDING 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 play’s delicate, melancholic tone and understated approach to the interconnectedness of the human experience.