←Recommendations of An Invocation To His Muse

An Invocation To His Muse is an incredibly thoughtful and soul-stirring look at the complex relationship between an artist and their work. Despite the play’s source material being an Edward Hopper painting, Edward is not in the play— it chooses instead to focus on his wife, Jo, a refreshing take on the often all-too-male-centered world of art history. Beautifully done.

I can give no higher praise than to say I wish I had written this play. The richness of the dialogue with many brilliant lines; the pathos of the two women, the backdrop of art, muse, the underratedness of women painters, the jealousy of men, the price women pay to stay alive...loneliness. All set against the backdrop of the Automat, and IN the Automat painting. Pure genius. Playwright Aly Kantor is one to read, follow, and savor.

An ethereal duologue in one of the most evocatively familiar places in 20th Century art - an Edward Hopper painting. Aly Kantor doesn't reveal too much too soon, but allows her two characters to confide their experiences so effectively that they finally merge seamlessly. There's a real joy to a piece that is self-aware as this, essentially set in a Hopper painting while looking back towards the muse that helped its creation. This is sensitive, thoughtful work.

Immediately Aly Kantor takes you to not only another time but also another world. I imagine Aly standing there, staring at this painting, formulating a fantastically compassionate story. In a world where literally anything can inspire us to tell a story, Kantor has taken art and made brilliant art with it. A masterpiece.

Kantor perfectly captures the isolation of Edward Hopper's painting "The Automat" through this ten minute evocative, metaphorical drama that succinctly tells the story of the famed Edward Hopper's wife, Jo. This play is a beautifully crafted work of word art. Produce!

A beautiful and wrenching story inspired by Edward Hopper's painting "The Automat." A period piece that speaks to audiences of today.

The visceral, transcendent quality of this play perfectly complements the isolation evoked in the Edward Hopper painting. There is a feeling in the beginning of the play that the isolation is broken by an encounter between an older and younger artist, but is it? The sliced cake metaphor is astonishingly original. Beautifully written and heartbreaking.

Aly Kantor has offered us a lyrical play for two female actors at the top of their game. The play as written perfectly evokes the haunted loneliness of Hopper’s “Automat” while foregrounding the notion that Jo Hopper herself is absent from our conversations despite her undoubted influence on Edward Hopper’s aesthetic. Words that came to mind while reading: absence, loneliness, but not despair. Hope, certainly. And I miss automat cake. The title reminds me of the Tom Waits song Invitation to the Blues (Waits also borrows from Hopper). I love this play and hope to see it staged.

This play is so atmospheric, so elegant and so like the painting it sets itself in. It takes a great writer to bring a two dimensional image to life, Aly does this to excellent effect. I won't give any more away, suffice to say the author manages to throw in a wonderful unexpected twist at the end. This play is beautifully elegant but with with a sad undertone. Brilliant!

This piece is almost dangerously charming. Within the first few pages I found myself saying, "Now that's a good line" out loud. Kantor spins us around the automat machine full of fun and enticing choices and then makes it gut-wrenchingly clear that sometimes the choices make us and there's nothing to do but make our happiness in the consequence.