←Recommendations of The Remarkably Unremarkable Crucifixion of Emma Reynolds

This play starts like a simple monologue and slowly becomes something deeply unsettling. Emma’s story pulls you in, then quietly implicates you in her pain. It’s weird, powerful, and impossible to shake.

Holy cow... what short play/monologue. DANIEL PRILLAMAN has written something that will haunt audiences for some time after experiencing it. Working with teens, I recognize the feelings of Emma and the plight she cannot escape. PRILLAMAN creates a world that defies logic, time, and consequences. Absolutely superb.

01.24.25 - I'm stunned. STUNNED. I read that title. I've read Prillaman's stuff before. I still wasn't prepared for what he put on paper here. A young woman talks us through her crucifixion at the hands of a magician at a school assembly. Read that sentence again. It's brilliant and disturbing and impossible and Prillaman (If I can use that as a descriptive, and hell yes, I can). He never fails to astound me with his imagery and imagination. Keep writing this stuff Dan, and show us how it's done

I love the restraint with which Daniel Prillaman resists piling on absurdities after the premise is revealed. Not only do the observers not take actions that would dull the edge of his gambit, but also their inaction perfectly reveals their character in a play about the failure of others to act on Emma's behalf.

Like Gregor in Kafka's Metamorphosis turned into a bug feeling “nailed to the floor”, Emma too is a sacrifice for the alienated, the bullied. Fully conscious and complicit in her own sacrifice. She's the best kind of sacrifice: innocent, sensitive and acutely aware of the injustice, the sights, sounds, the crowd... and yet not in pain. Not hungry. It's worse. She's completely alone, alienated, forsaken. Prillaman's Emma exemplifies the intensity of human loneliness, depression and adolescence. Exquisite.

Daniel Prillaman is a master of making the utterly mundane creepy AF. THE REMARKABLY UNREMARKABLE CRUCIFIXION OF EMMA REYNOLDS is just that! Prillaman has perfectly captured the exasperated tone of a teenage girl who is impressed by nothing, and then given her a story that is both completely run of the mill and impossibly beyond belief. It's the little details that makes this monologue so spot on: Being late for school, annoyed the surprise assembly, the weird reassurances from the magician!

Daniel’s usual fine work, similar to oh, say, George Saunders or Anton Chekhov writing about a woman being crucified as a SHORT STORY? That short story would be celebrated/hailed/assigned to future English classes so that students can write whole essays about the imagery, the themes and how the author accomplishes so much mastery in such a little space. And so it should be with Emma’s crucifixion. Remarkably Unremarkable? No. Remarkably remarkably unremarkable, which is in itself remarkable.

Dark, disturbing work. An impressive critique on bullying and the bystander effect!

An utterly haunting depiction of a unique horror visited on an innocent teen-aged girl. Gripping from the start, this monologue didn't let go long after I finished reading. I was so shaken I had to step away before attempting to write a recommendation. This is a most original and unforgettable work.

I am sitting here, reading this monologue on Palm Sunday. I saw a play earlier this week where a man, telling his life story, said that he has found a way to remain awake while going under anesthesia; he can now feel the drug working and can catch the second before he goes under. He will do the same right before he dies. It unnerved me. Prillaman is doing something similar here. He's catching a moment. An awful moment. And just letting it hang there. Suspended. While life continues all around you.