←Recommendations of The Resurrectionist

A gorgeous gem of a play that explores life's biggest questions — love and death — with equal parts humor and profundity. Another couple adjectives: Gross (in a fun way) and philosophical (also in a fun way). RIYL laughing while you cry or crying while you laugh.

A tight comedy with three killer female roles! My favorite line was, "Mountains are always mountains, but good luck navigating one range with the map of another." I really appreciated the intelligence and zestfulness of this piece. It's quite a thought experiment, simple enough once presented, but so achingly human in its execution. Kitt's profession is one that I have not seen onstage - except as a male, creepy, horror-centric subplot - and it was fascinating to watch her navigate the ethics of it.

A beautiful, tender short play with dialogue that moves briskly and is both spare and profound. Stevens explores loneliness, connection, and grief in this humorous and poignant piece. Kitt, Audrey, and Avery's arcs are satisfying and surprising. This was a truly unique read that I'd love to see in production--its theatricality begs to be brought to life onstage.

Never before has grave digging seemed so sexy. The unique world of this play is created with such confidence that it immediately invites you in and keeps you engaged throughout. 

A play that oozes with warmth and empathy towards who we are in relation to the body. Stevens so beautifully raises the question of where inside of our bodies is the ability to exist and whether the things we feel emotionally correlate to the things we feel physically. It is a love story with such genius distance that makes us crave a closeness in our own relationships and our own bodies. But it's also an accessible and familiar world that immerses us with such strange intimacy. A yummy, heartbreaking and heart-mending play.

A heartfelt and stunning play! The Resurrectionist is a beautiful fantasy, set in modern times. Touching on loss, coping, and what to do with a second chance when you're unsure if it will last, the plot of this play is deeply complex and filled with the yearning that temporary death can bring. The soliloquies in The Resurrectionist are some of the most beautiful writing I have encountered in modern theatre. I sincerely hope that productions of this play will come in the future, because I believe that audiences will find themselves in these characters, in spite of their not-quite-realistic circumstances.

Golly I like this play! We don't get a lot of Love Stories that are content to be Love Stories, plays whose conflict is not buttressed by genre cliches but instead driven simply by the restless, sad, yearning hearts of its characters. The Resurrectionist is not the least bit ashamed of its black-comic absurdity and monster-movie tropes, but deeply invests those elements with heart and soul. This is a play about wanting someone to reach out and touch, realized with tons of brisk humor and quiet, careful intimacy. A balm for the nerdy, needy, loving soul.

Saw this play at The Great Plains Theatre Conference. I was invested from page one. Ryan really knows how to create two vital characters and put them in a quirky but fun situation. I was immediately drawn into the story and made me love a genre that I thought I wouldn't care for. Great work, Ryan!

I love this play sooo hard. Ryan is simultaneously exploring the depth of the genre they are interrogating while at the same moment infusing their own love and humor to create a resurrection story that never once feels tired. The plays has layers that sometimes literally fall off, but always there to be picked up and further explored. This play is perfect for young womxn and serves as a wonderful exploration into death, grief, love, and the forces that bind them all.

Through dark humor, poetic speeches, and interesting theatricality, this writer has built a world for characters who need love and acceptance. Can a loner who likes the silence of the graveyard find love? Can a grieving mother learn to accept who her daughter truly is? And how can we ever learn to say goodbye to those we love? The living never have enough time to say what they feel, and I'm glad that even though time is fleeting, that Aubrey, Kitt, and Aubrey's mother Avery, go on this journey towards love & acceptance.