←Recommendations of IN TRAINING

Like every new job I have started... this wonderful piece will resonate with audiences!

This play captures the anxiety of starting a new job and the absurdity that sometimes comes with odd institutions. It's over-the-top and easy to connect with -- great for short play festivals!

A hilarious comedy about the job from hell and a snake to boot! Well done.

If all this play did was give you 10 pages of crackling, absurd humor for actors to dig into, that would be more than enough. But Carnes also deftly and accurately paints for us, with that absurdity, the horror of the working world. And to top it off, she gives us an object lesson or three concerning the exercise of power. So much crammed into this absurdly easy-to-produce, creepy and hilarious ten minute play.

Truly...the job from Hell. Quick-paced, hilarious, and a nightmare for someone with a snake phobia. Or a fear of the dark. Or a fear of cluelessly beginning a new job. Still, it has more truth than one might care to admit.

The metaphorical possibilities of a job training conducted entirely in the dark are rich enough, but the reveal that the job is releasing snakes from a bag only to turn around and recapture them carries this two-hander to dizzying comic heights. The dialogue is wry and delineates character (smug manager, eager bordering on desperate new hire) clearly even though they remain unseen.

I've spent enough time in the corporate workplace to know that this fantastical little comedy is only one step beyond what actually happens between bemused and well-meaning employees and their incomprehensibly demanding bosses. A cutely serpentine play that says it all in a tiny space.

Intriguing - engaging. More fun than reaching into a bag of snakes in the dark - which might become a new metaphor for the workplace. A lovely play that will get the audience squirming. Or wriggling.

We've all been there, the trust exercises, the team bonding exercises, but Carnes takes us to somewhere new. By placing us in one of the absurdist examples of a trust exercise and cutting off our senses by placing the entirely of the play in the dark, she has made us relate to both the boss and the employee in different ways. The manager instills in their employee a lot of truth about not assuming pronouns even if it is with a snake and the need for trust which is instrumental in a lot of leadership approaches.

Oh good heavens. Carnes has created a delightfully absurd piece of theater that will have everyone nodding sadly and chuckling to each other (and perhaps gasping and pulling their feet up at the thought of snakes on the floor). Immensely relatable to anyone who has ever been under a bizarre and unfair boss while being desperate to please, this play delights in its quirkiness and really hits it home with a few hilarious zingers ("how do you know it's a he?") I think I can perfectly sum up this play in one word: MEOW? Highly recommended.