←Recommendations of PARTNER OF —

The story of Sally Hemmings is often overlooked, and Rachael Carnes' short but powerful "Partner Of --" does a great job of bringing her experience, and her trauma, to life. As always, she does a lot in a few pages. This is a compelling historical work.

WOW! Rich, vivid, elliptical language that is by turns funny, witty, and devastating. Also a powerful look at what we don't see behind the lives of legendary historical figures. Carnes allows the audience/reader to piece together what's going on until in finally comes together in one disturbing crash, creating a brief play that has a large impact. HIGHLY recommend this play!

This short play packs a powerful punch that left me feeling haunted and troubled by an often untold moment of American history. I had the honor to encounter Carnes's work through the 2019 Samuel French Off Off Broadway Festival and I'm so glad I did. PARTNER OF is masterfully constructed and probing in its examination of race, history, power, and trauma.

In just a few minutes with just a few well-chosen lines, Rachael Carnes writes a play that shows generations of abuse, physical, mental and sexual. It's also a riveting story of the loss of innocence. Very well done.

What a wonderful piece.

History plays should have us look at the past to start a conversation or to shed a light on something we don't talk about. Carnes does both here, and in only 10 minutes too.

The dialogue is as poetic as it is painful. The play as a whole is nothing short of absolutley nessesary. It has plenty of reccomendations for a reason.

PARTNER OF - deserves a read. It will make you think. It will make you feel.

I was fortunate enough to see a staged reading of Partner Of. This is a remarkable and moving short play about the inhumanity of slavery and loss of innocence. Rachael Carnes made a brilliant choice to set this play at a time before Thomas Jefferson began raping Sally Hemings. She forces us to experience the horror with Sally as she begins to understand what is going to happen to her. I heard the play compared to Sophie’s Choice, because of the horrible choice facing Sally and her mother. I agree completely. It’s a poetic play. Hard to watch.

This is a piece of beautiful poetry, three voices speaking together but also entirely separate. Though the setting is well placed in the beginning and in the lines the three women speak, this play features almost no stage directions leaving room for the actors and director to match the poetry of the lines with movement. A really beautiful piece!

There are so many recommendations for this play, and it's not hard to see why. From the opening monologue I was riveted. I loved the interplay of all three characters, and how Carnes uses the well-known Sally and Jefferson story to illuminate the cycle of violence against women.

Everything about this play is chilling—from the language, to the expectations of Sally weighed against what the audience knows will happen, to the grieving normalization of Sally’s plight. An unflinching examination of the dark side of the American legacy.

Extremely powerful. Carnes interweaves her dialogue with grace and brutality, leaving you with nowhere safe to go. This play could be the showstopper of any evening of shorts.