←Recommendations of More of a Heart

The community of National Committee readers for the 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival advanced MORE OF A HEART as a Semi-Finalist at Playwrights Foundation. We found compelling the nuanced points of view and strong characters and well-structured scenes. The play dramatizes well how families behave with each other: both brutal and tender. We hope this play is considered for further development and investigation, and finds dedicated collaborators in this play’s journey towards production. #BAPF46

Dave Osmundsen’s plays consistently affect me in three ways: they make me cry, make me laugh, and challenge me. MORE OF A HEART is powerful play about how society suppresses and fetishizes neurodivergence, and how important it is for autistic people to control their own lives and their own narratives. It’s also just a fantastic family play, touching and infuriating and full of messy imperfect love. MORE OF A HEART is a story that I will continue to carry with me as a parent, reminding me that best way to love my kids is to listen.

This play was such an incredible gift to read and work on as part of the Great Plains Theatre Conference. I learned so much as an intimacy designer and found new ways to support this incredible work. The care necessary to craft full and rich characters all throughout the autism constellation and their caregivers is evident within this play. Neurotypical and neurodiverse folks alike will find profound meaning and connection throughout this piece.

Read this play! Produce this play! If you love Dave's work, this is exactly what you'd hope for. If you don't know Dave's work, this is a great place to start. New plays can have a lot of onstage ~discourse~ that I honestly can't stand, and Dave has a way of finding the difficult path and slipping compelling point/counterpoint into his scenes that challenges an audience without feeling like a seminar. This story is peopled by good people who are struggling, and I'm very excited for theatregoing audiences to see their stories.

This is a very specific story about one young man with autism and his complex relationship with his advocate mother. It is also a universal story of a parent struggling to let go of control and a young adult's struggle for independence. It is exhilarating to see Zachary find and express his own voice after years of well-meaning suppression.

I've been sitting here for ages trying to find words for what I just experienced. Wow. I've never encountered a story like this before. Heartbreaking and heartwarming all that once, asking challenging questions about the way we understand ourselves and each other. This play should be required reading in college courses in contemporary theatre. I hope to experience it in person someday. Brilliant work!

Osmundsen’s “More of a Heart” touches on a plethora of topics, such as ableism, interfamily conflict, and questions the true meaning of being an “advocate.” A play that will make you look in the mirror and question your own morality, Osmundsen’s concise and clear direction with this piece gives it a multitude of shapes, along with realistic characters with a more-than-believable dynamic, “More of a Heart” is a buffet of thought for the reader and audience to sample and experience. Highly recommended!

A cutting and heartfelt and brilliantly-structured examination of a searingly complex mother-son relationship. As always with Osmundsen's work, I am so enthralled by the effortless empathy and pathos he brings to every character, no matter how small, and the organic ways interpersonal dynamics play out against smart and subtle theatrical conceits. Not a moment feels false. Excellent!

As an Autistic playwright, this play was tough to watch. For anybody who has Autistic loved ones, it is necessary viewing. This deeply compassionate play examines family trauma, ableism, internalized ableism, and many of the other horrors that Autistic people are all too familiar with. Dave takes you to uncomfortable places, knowing full well, it is necessary to go there for healing to occur. And healing does occur. Zachary ends this play well and fully changed, as does Mary-Ellen. And the rest of us leave changed and healed, too.

Touching, sharp, and highly specific, this piece covers huge and heavy topics--terminal illness, family, caretaking, advocacy vs selfishness--without getting bogged down at all. It's a clever sleight of hand that we're introduced to the passionate, imperfect, and overbearing Mary-Ellen and make our own judgments of her before we slowly start to see the full effects that her behavior has had on her son Zachary, who becomes our equally complex and sympathetic hero. Indeed, all of the characters are well-developed and full of grey areas, and the piece builds to a wholly affecting, heartbreaking, but nuanced conclusion.