←Recommendations of We Are Cranston

Cringe-worthy and terrible in all the right ways, this hilarious dark comedy shows us there’s nothing more important than football. A fun short that will have audiences squirming in their seats with delight.

Lisa is one of the most reliably intuitive playwrights I know - she takes a kernel of an idea and fearlessly interrogates it, pushing it to the nth degree. Here, a team readies themselves for the state semi-final football game, only to find out that the Varsity squad from their opponents were horribly killed days prior. Yet, coach insists they go out and demolish the grieving JV squad so he can reap the glory. Black comedy at its finest, beautifully rendered. This is a beauty.

I'm not a "sports person," so when I downloaded this play, I wasn't sure what to expect - sure enough, about one page in I had tears in my eyes... from laughter! This absurd premise just keeps getting more delightfully ridiculous as the details are revealed - I can imagine an entire audience squirming and cringing along with these poor football players! At its core, this play is a dark mediation about dreams deferred and the lengths some people will go through for five minutes of satisfaction. Audiences will walk out of theatres chatting about this one for sure!

WE ARE CRANSTON is a dark comedy gem. The writer really does a great job at taking what is quite obviously a horrible situation and turning it into a fantastic play. If you don't wince at the coach a dozen times while you read this, I'd be very surprised. Well done!

A clever take on the athlete(s) dying young trope - what about the other team? What I love about the piece is how the students are being perfectly sensible and empathetic human beings about their whole impossible situation, but it's the coach who's hopelessly emotionally stunted. Which makes for a great contrast while simultaneously mining both black comedy and legit pathos. Well done.

"We Are Cranston" is an excellent short piece satirizing sportsmanship and the lengths we go to to win a trophy. Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend creates a tragic situation as the backdrop to this play but the dialogue is snappy, real and funny. I laughed out loud at many parts of this play and felt bad every. single. time.
This is a brilliant satire. Someone please put this on, before high school football playoffs end.

Some sports fans will say that football is the most important thing in their lives and we would tell them they are being over dramatic. But in this piece the writer takes that premise and escalates it with a huge dose of tragedy, conflict of conscience and pressure. She has created a dark but amusing piece in the dialogue, even though the basic premise of football winning out over all feeling is quite a sad notion. Very well written by Lisa!

This play effectively conveys both an emotional punch and biting satire. And it is wickedly funny on top of it.

LISA DELLAGIARINO FERIEND’s ten-minute play packs a punch. A high school football coach ‘needs’ a big win to redeem his self-esteem and ‘prove’ his worth. “We Are Cranston” shows that teenagers can and do have empathy, values, and common sense, notwithstanding how much The Big Games might mean to them personally. I love that young men are portrayed in such a redeeming way.

Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend is a playwright to be reckoned with. There's comedy in WE ARE CRANSTON and there is drama. There are well-drawn characters and pitch-perfect dialogue - and there is commentary, too -- on what our culture has chosen to value in competitive sports. I look forward to reading more of her work!