←Recommendations of WABI SABI

Just watched a PERFECTLY CAST reading of WABI SABI with Almost Adults theater. They really brought out all that is delightful in this play.

And there is much that is delightful.

Carnes takes a broad subject “trans teens” and makes it incredibly personal, i.e. about THIS trans teen. Adolescence is difficult enough anyway, but when one is also transitioning physically, evolution and transformation are two vastly separate things happening at the same time.

The play also gives these young characters a complicated history that makes them all the more real. It hits hard and just right!

A great place about reconnecting, remembering and accepting the changes and life experience that have occurred. Well done.

Rachael Carnes has a remarkable and refreshing knack for capturing the emotional connections between young characters written with authenticity, humor, and great compassion.

A sweet play for and about teenagers, teaching them the possibility of accepting someone whom one character thought she knew, but who was in fact headed in a totally different direction. The metaphors of the Japanese tea ceremony and the ballet help save the play from didacticism, and the ending, where the girl Lauren finally speaks the male character Mike's name, is perfect.

A gentle tea ceremony with all of its symbols and grace and a library - a place of knowledge- set the stage for a heartfelt coming of age, coming to terms, and coming together of two teens. A friendship gone astray, a dance not finished and a recognition of change, growth, and acceptance is everything a teen needs to hear today. A beautiful treatise on the possibilities where there is acceptance and care.

What a profound moving play with elegance, surprise, heart and wit. Nothing but love for the dialogue, the tea ceremony and the characters exploring their identity and relationship to each other.

Rachael Carnes' "Wabi Sabi" is a tender, funny, and psychologically astute view into the minds and hearts of teens searching for identity and connection in the midst of change. I love Rachael's dialogue and am impressed with her command of tea ceremony! A delight.

In writing, playwrights ask themselves, "Why today?" This play is a perfect answer, a snapshot of a critical moment that, though it goes well, reveals much about the moments that don't.

It's a script you dwell on and take in like the ceremonies in this script. There are big questions, and uncomfortable silences, and perhaps even an answer that comes through in the meeting place of the silence trying to find balance and the noise of confusion attempting to understand. It's a play that mirrors the world where there is no easy answer, only the hope and optimism that understanding and love will triumph at the end. Carnes does not fail to deliver in that regard with this gentle, quiet piece.