←Recommendations of Bartleby & Bess (5-10 minute play)

This short play maintains great character development as we're granted a moment to step inside Bartleby's mind to share in the hope and anxiety that comes from seeing someone after a long break. Lovely!

He may not have changed but she has in his eyes = a lovely ending.

With her short and powerful piece BARTLEBY & BESS, Elisabeth Giffin Speckman does a fine job showing a terror of ordinary living - meeting up with a special someone you haven't seen in over a year, wondering how things stand between you. Bartleby's obsessive attention to detail brings out the palpable tension and this contrasts wonderfully with Bess's relaxed, breezy manner. So much is implied and not directly answered, this piece leaves you dumbstruck with the possibilities. I'm still thinking about the crossword puzzle on the plane the person ahead of Bartleby did wrongly and with a pen!!

Elisabeth Giffin Speckman captures such poignant and magical moments in BARTLEBY & BESS. The opening monologue is funny with such complexity and heart, and the final moments full of hope and promise. A wonderful short piece that will have you rooting for the characters at the same time as you're identifying with their anxieties and anticipations.

The anxiety that Bartleby goes through before Bess arrives is so palpable and clear. Speckman is great at providing the specificity for the obsessive aspects of Bartleby's mania so that it pierces us directly. Her language choices and the rhythms she provides the characters give the piece so much momentum. This is sweet, as some have said, but it's also maddening and wild and could go almost any which way, and while it lands beautifully at the end, there is great tension!

Incredibly sweet, charming, and imaginative, Speckman explores this relationship and reunion with a loving touch. Bartleby’s soliloquy serves as a running commentary of his inner monologue as he anxiously awaits Bess’ arrival, and it’s just lovely. And the final stage image speaks unsaid volumes. Beautiful.

As the pandemic rages and we continue to communicate via screens, Bartleby & Bess delivers an in-person, hoped-for romance. It’s nuanced. It’s poignant. It’s clever. And the end gives the audience one of the loveliest moments in time.

ELISABETH GIFFIN SPECKMAN has written a sweet play of the reuniting of a man and woman after 408 days. When we haven’t seen someone for a long time, we anticipate they probably changed as well as ourselves. In fact, there is always some changes, but our basic personalities tend to stay very much as they were. “Bartley & Bess” is a very nice play, which I would love to see performed.

A beautiful short play about love, hope, and pencils. Such a gorgeous monologue that will tear at your heart and make you throw out all your pens. Playwright Elisabeth Giffin Speckman provides a window into one man's soul with great craft and compassion. Read it and produce it!

In this enchanting brief encounter, Bartleby, who shares his name with literature’s most reluctant enigma, is the perfect embodiment of relationship fear and anxiety – until he discovers that connection can be found in the simple as well as the profound.