←Recommendations of Stitched with a Sickle and a Hammer

Inna Tsyrlin's gorgeous play introduced me to a historical event that I admittedly knew very little about prior to encountering this piece. Between stirring monologues, characters that leap off the page, and a constant sense of tension, Stitched with a Sickle and a Hammer will stay with you long after the curtain falls.

With evocative language and a dose of humor, Tsyrlin creates a landscape that instantly pulls you in, giving you characters to both love and despise. And with United States and Russian relations in the news and the US having it’s own detention centers, this play set in the 1940’s feels increasingly relevant. I was fortunate enough to see a university production of this play, and I encourage theatres to consider putting it their season immediately.

I had the incredible honor to see a workshop production of this play at Ohio University, and was familiar with the play through workshop readings before. Inna's language is powerful on its own, but in production, this play is elevated to a whole other level. It is gripping, brutal, and heart wrenching, but still at times Inna -- not unlike Chekhov, whose play The Seagull is masterfully evoked throughout -- finds moments of love, beauty, and humor even in the darkest situation.

Inna Tsyrlin painful depicts a gruesome side to the World War that is often lost to history. She demonstrates the strength of women and the difficult choice that is made between shouting the truth or just going along with the play. The whole gulag is a play within a play as the prison guards hope to put on a little performance to fool the Americans. In fact, everything in the play is a performance for each characters' life. It's when they break character and go off script that the truth of heartbreak and devastation sets in

I was fortunate enough to see a workshop production of this play at Ohio University. Wow. I can't remember the last time a piece of theater made my heart race as much as the final scene of this play did. Tsyrlin masterfully handles layers of meta-theatricality in this play about a theater troupe putting on The Seagull as part of a Potemkin village. Both intimate and epic, this play balances the harsh reality of the gulag with moments of humor and humanity. It deserves many more productions.

I've now had the opportunity to hear this play out loud twice and it floors me every time. The story and characters are so vividly drawn and clear that it's almost cinematic. I can't wait to see this play produced on stage.