←Recommendations of Delete

This one will stay with me for a long time. A short play full of pathos. Bravo.

The finality of a delete action feels devastating when it’s our written work, but how do we reconcile a hasty choice that has fatal consequences? Jacqueline Floyd-Priskorn has written an amazing short play that addresses mortality, tragic choices, and the ignorance of what those choices can mean when we don’t understand the effects of an erratic, emotional response that cannot be reversed. This is unsettling in the best possible way.

Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn could give a master class on disguising metaphorical dialogue as something completely different than intended. I admit that I thought the dialogue was neat, but something was a bit off the first time I read it. It was the second time I read it that I realized what this play was actually about. Which makes the last line so incredibly devastating. Makes all of the lines so devastating. This one tricked me good the first time and I felt guilty for laughing at the lines I laughed at. Which it would seem was with purpose! Highly Recommend!

JACQUELYN FLOYD-PRISKORN’s short piece is a marvelously witty (and so true for a computer incompetent person like me) computer disaster tale in which all the data is deleted. Oh, my, there is so much fun in this. I highly recommend “Delete”!

In 8 brisk and deep pages, Floyd-Priskorn manages to handle several layers to make anyone think. I love a story that works on multiple levels fairly, and this both expresses the horror of thinking you've lost everything and the more existential implications that suggests. I was lucky to hear a reading of this piece during quarantine and I'm glad to have found it here.

As Freud noted, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But sometimes a metaphor can become a pointed and even humorous insight into life, existence, and the casualness with which we approach it. Sounds really deep, eh? But not in the deft and snappy dialogue in this short play that takes a look at how easily we can delete something -- a word, a document, a life -- and only then realize the "Oh NO!" moment. A life-or-delete lesson if there ever was one.

If only some lost data were the only consequence to this gut punch of a play by Jacquie Floyd-Priskorn. And yet, isn't it funny how upset we get when we THINK we've lost everything due to a reckless act like punching a delete key? Jacquie shows us a truly horrific result of an unthinking act, yet does it with a metaphor so identifiable. The clever use of IT and the double meaning of that name was inspired. This was a terrific way to present an ugly and important subject.

What starts as pleasantly written dialogue quickly turns existential and will leave you waiting for each new layer to peel down and reveal the tasty core of this short play. Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn's writing will make you wish the show goes on and on, but the final beat is the sort of delicious gut-punch that lets you know that sometimes It ends exactly where It should.

Not many people can create a fully realized world and distinct characters in under eight pages; Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn does not suffer from this problem. Using a platform many can understand (those long conversations with a person in IT when we are desperately trying to retrieve an important file from our computer which only gives us the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH), Floyd-Priskorn unpacks gun violence(s) in a remarkably nuanced, theatrical, and heart-breaking way. I happened to listen to Dan Reeder's "Maybe" after reading this play; if I were directing it, that's how I'd close this thoughtful piece.

Delete addresses so much in a scant ten minutes. Deleting is too easy. Ending life is simple. Accidental or intentional, there is no redo. How can we make it harder to press “delete” and easier to ask “help?”