←Recommendations of TOUCH THE MOON One Act Play, 3 Characters

A veiled retelling of the Natalee Holloway disappearance in Aruba. Deftly told and creatively staged. The writer managed to breathe some life to an already twice told tale with inventive staging and dramatic overlap.

Arianna shows you the heartache and pain of a mother seeking the truth about her daughter’s disappearance from a man who may be suffering from mental illness. It’s a beautiful and poetic play that aroused strong emotions in the audience. . I saw this at the 2022 Inge festival in Independence KS.

Arianna Rose is a playwright who routinely – and expertly – exploits the rhythms and music of language to explore the complications of the human heart. In TOUCH THE MOON, which I saw in a reading at the 2022 Inge Festival, Rose is inspired by a real-life mystery about the unsolved disappearance of a young woman and she finds poetry even in the darkest of human truths. This is a beautifully theatrical and haunting play.

I saw a reading of this play at the 2022 William Inge Theatre Festival. Though it covers a very challenging subject matter, it was engaging and outright poetic throughout. The playwright really took some bold swings while employing the reenacted-flashback format -- and these swings always paid off to give us a vivid, memorable piece of art. This one stuck with me!

I recently had the good fortune of seeing this suspenseful and devastating piece. Arianna Rose captures the heartache and desperation of a mother searching for answers to a mystery every parent fears. I strongly recommend this play!

I had the privilege of watching this play at the 2022 Inge festival. It is a gripping and excellently crafted short play. This play wonderfully crafts images and time jumps to convey a mother’s horror at her daughter’s disappearance. Highly recommend this work.

This mother's nightmare has the communal power and anguish of Greek tragedy and yet it's a modern "Spring Break" play. Events have already happened, in 1995, but the seamless construction, the choral-like overlapping of scenes make TOUCH THE MOON seem to be happening in perpetuity. From Nebraska, Miranda has never seen the ocean, a detail that brings home how youthful and innocent she is. I love how events all swirl beneath the all-knowing, ever-present moon, and that the ghost of Miranda guides the play to its heart-breaking, tragic, inevitable conclusion. Beautifully constructed, very powerful work!!

This play eerily sets uo a tragedy that is familiar to all too many of us: the disappearance of a young woman on the verge of experiencing life as an adult. It touches with delicate craft on the horrors of sexual violence, parental desperation and the plight of mental instability. I watched a reading of it with actors from Walking Shadows Readers Theatre, who I felt dealt really well with the complexity of their roles. A beautiful piece that presents a horrific situation from many viewpoints.

Terrifying, heartbreaking, and beautiful all at once. An overprotective mother - or is she? A daughter takes too many chances on an island holiday with friends - or does she? A local boy reconstructs the events of the night in so many different ways that the pieces seem like they will never fit - or will they? A perfect piece which deserves the recognition it is getting. Brava.

Arianna Rose took me along on a journey with her compelling story of every mother's nightmare. Her staging and dialogue is brilliant. This one I would love to see performed. Well done, Arianna.