←Recommendations of Babel

Goldfinger balances dystopian future with a present that audiences will very much connect with in this heart-wrenching play. The arguments for both sides are believable, and it asks big questions about how we label people and how damaging labels - even those that are "earned" - can be. Plus, there are real, high stakes, tight two-person scenes, and a lot of heart. Excellent all around!

Cool play! As a mom, the paranoia here rings true. These fears of eugenics are real, and I am fascinated with the frightening world this writer has created. Much food for thought about how many steps away our world is from pre-certification? Maybe not so far!

Babel is an empathetic, theatrical story that imagines the future of fetal genetic testing. The play creates an unsettling and powerful juxtaposition between the high stakes of a pregnancy and the absurdity of a pot-smoking stork mascot. Goldfinger’s voice has a specific compelling rhythm that plays with the unspoken and has a way of making the political feel deeply personal. The play has three juicy roles for women, and-- even though the play is set in the future-- it feels frighteningly relevant to the present.

what a beautiful, moving and scary play. such real human relationships in the midst of a scifi universe that is terrifyingly like our own. I'm left with so much to think about. thanks!

BABEL is wildly innovative and frighteningly powerful; it raises a metric ton of difficult questions that spiral into ever more difficult questions. Jacqueline Goldfinger is precise with her sharp, fascinating, and wickedly intelligent dialogue to a point that the story cuts even in places where we think it is softer. #PlaywrightPlug

Do you like intelligent, fascinating dialogue, a stork with the voice of Harvey Weinstein, a torpedo pace that plumbs the depths of expecting parent anxieties, and delicious lines for actors? Read this play if you do. While the play world is sci-fi, the themes are nothing but. Also, where else are you going to read a play that can make you laugh out loud and then choke in terror about genetics?

As disturbing as it is timely, BABEL raises hard questions – which spin out into other hard questions – about genetics and science and power and privilege. Darkly comic and dappled with poignance, Goldfinger’s high-speed play feels like a cautionary tale – haunting, fascinating, and vital.

A powerful piece of speculative fiction. Goldfinger taps into the universal anxieties of parents in her portrait of a supposed utopia with insidious restrictions. While handily tackling large-scale themes around nature-vs-nurture and individual autonomy, she also manages to craft heartbreakingly authentic portraits of four people in crisis. An evocative story about society's obsession with perfection and about the chances we take for the ones we love.

Jacqueline’s plays unfailingly present beguiling and utterly original worlds, voices, and characters; in her capable hands, the familiar is made unfamiliar and vice-versa. So it is with BABEL, an alternately harrowing and comic piece that examines a world in which 'progress' has ushered in a new era of eugenics. Like the figurative frog in the boiling pot of water, Jacqueline turns up the temperature on her characters – and audiences – gradually, creating a dystopian future that feels just around the corner, but one that also beautifully illustrates the capacity for compassion in an uncompassionate world.

BABEL is a beautiful meditation on the conflicts between technology, parenthood, love, and control. A futuristic love-story that never once feels inaccessible or far-fetched, the way sci-fi so often feels. Goldfinger's take on the romcom is undeniably her own: it's smart and funny and messy and above all: it's poignant. The characters in her playworld are desperate, complicated, conflicted, and so real. A deft balance of heartbreak and hope that BABEL navigates showcases Goldfinger's immense skills as a dramatist. BABEL is a play that needs to be produced widely. Now. Right now.