←Recommendations of The Dog Museum

This is a piece of poetry, a painting, a song you listen to on purpose to make yourself cry. I found myself fighting tears right from the first consult Mac had. And when Mom comes out for the final time, I gasped and just found myself so moved by the whole journey I had with Mac. So focused on the destination, we never looked at the places we were on the way. Gorgeously haunting piece.

A fantastic look into the journey of ourselves and the search through time and memory for happiness. We look for do-overs, but is that really what we need? Insightful and well done!

This incredibly personal work stands out as a unique voice on the stage, plunging down the rabbit hole of memory, regret, nostalgia, and doubt to explore the layers of the human soul. Mac, both the protagonist and narrator of his life and story, seems to know what is going on throughout the play and simultaneously nothing at all. The paradox of a life lived, but to what degree? Foglia has exquisitely dramatized Kierkegaard's words that "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards" with insightful exploration and an open heart to what happens after us.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this tender-hearted, creative, and offbeat play. Foglia does an excellent job of establishing a unique theatrical universe with skillful "showing" of the world versus overly expository world building. Mac's introspective and poignant journey was told with an amazing balance of humor and pathos, and Foglia uses it to illuminate and analyze loneliness and the choices people make to either overcome it or let it consume them. Designers and directors have a lot of room to play within this well-structured piece as well, making it an appealingly adaptable slice of universal, metaphorical truth.

Stephen Foglia’s use of language to paint his story, his characters, and his action is extraordinary, and gives his winning “The Dog Museum” an additional sheen of beauty. Highly recommended.

I absolutely fell in LOVE with this play. It seamlessly blends sci-fi, poetry, and classic American theater ala Our Town. The language is rich with metaphor and prose, but remains light and active throughout. The relationships are both complex and real, leaving you feeling satisfied but curious. This play has the hallmark Foglia style...funny, heartbreaking and poignant, without taking itself too seriously.

Foglia's rich and honest tale of Mac, about to embark on his own personal time-traveling journey, is a reflection on humanity. Through this quest for memory and identity, the dynamic storytelling will undoubtedly evoke similar questions for the audience. The text resonates profoundly like a Debussy song, with light, delicate strokes connecting deep undertones of reflection and introspection. Dog Museum is a daring cut directly to the core of humanity.

A poetic and deep melancholy is palpable in this play. The text is vulnerable and open and is a wonderful exploration of the essential loneliness of being human. A rumination on complexity of memory and connection and what it means if we know we have an option to try again. The story unfolds in a methodical and mind-bending way, ultimately drawing a link between Mac, the other characters of the play, and the hearts of the audience.

THE DOG MUSEUM is a deeply comlex and poetic exploration of loneliness, depression, memory, and especially the complicated ways those things intertwine. I was immediately struck by the brave vulnerability of the text, the way it dives into the self that so tragically dissociates and splinters. The language of the play is so immaculately and vividly rendered that its able to carry the reader through journey into the mind and memories of Mac and his narrator.