←Recommendations of The Great Impresario Boris Lermontov Would Like to Invite You To Dinner

There is something ineffable I love about this play. It feels alive in a real tangible way... like the script itself is a living breathing entity. I imagine this play when performed could lend itself to repeat viewings, revealing something new and surprising night in and night out. This is a great work of art and a joy to behold.

This is a play of constant creation and art. Willis skillfully portrays the dangers of allowing work to consume a person's life and overshadow the people and relationships that are essential to the creative process. Indeed, this play examines how we as theatre artists value the labor and skills that other artists bring to their work.

Beyond that, this play evolves and lives like art itself. The actors weave in and out of roles until they are consumed themselves by their art. This is an excellent piece, poignant, technical, and understanding. Willis has created a must-perform work!

Right from the beginning, this play introduces an element of actual chance into the production, a reminder to all involved of the nature of the Thing that they witness as an act continuously in the moment of creation. The two performers make the most out of the space, filling the delicately crafted words with delightful and magical action. Willis' text sharply reminds us of the performers onstage as humans and workers, and, fittingly, gives them a staggering amount of trust and agency in the full piece of physical art.

I love every inch of this play and how it moves as a living, breathing thing that will expand and contract with each showing - everything that theater should be, alive, honest, exciting.

Willis walks the line of control over the story as a playwright with such skill in this piece. The formatting on the language, the indentations, the artful poetic stage directions give such specific guidance to the performers that contrasts so beautifully with the freedom imbedded in the piece from the shifting roles and the ever present audience. Beyond the poignant insights to art and the complicated world behind the craft, this piece will sustain because it is alive, ever changing but somehow hauntingly consistent. I can't wait to see it again and again and again and again.

Wow. There’s so much more I want to say about this piece than will fit in this box! In the time of The Great Resignation and increased labor strikes, Tristan has devised a brilliantly meta-theatrical play that spotlights both oppressive bosses and how and why we as workers so often find ourselves exploited—especially in the arts! And they do it in a way that allows the actors agency. The metaphor of performers as cutlery is ingenious and haunting. This is a piece that will discomfit audiences and theatres alike, and should be produced everywhere RIGHT NOW!

A wonderfully ambitious and lyrical work. Willis channels a unique, charming, and devastating voice in this piece challenging the audience to find the humor, wit, and humanity in the characters. Reminiscent of the best of the Absurdists, Willis' work demands the attention of the reader and flows beautifully.