←Recommendations of Pluck

When people ask me what my favorite plays are, PLUCK is always in my top three. I learned a lot about writing from this play, but more importantly I learned a lot about myself. It's relatable, funny, engaging, and illuminating. I think about it all the time.

I saw a reading of Pluck at the 2023 National Playwrights Conference, and I can confirm that it made me laugh, shiver, and at one point sweat profusely. Jan captures the magic and the horror of puberty, and shows that it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for our parents, either. With its cryptids and ambiguous stains, Pluck will change the way you remember that small patch of woods at the edge of your hometown.

I love this play so much. It's so tonally particular in the best way possible. Cleo is a deeply sympathetic character who stays with you long after you've left the world of the play, which will swallow you whole. I really hope to see this staged someday.

This fierce, raw coming-of-age drama is what young audiences deserve—though theatre-goers of all ages will surely relate to this uber-honest depiction of teenage transformation (and the humiliating yearning to make one's strange and shameful internal world visible). I was particularly taken by the chatroom scenes, which add a unique sense of theatricality while perfectly encapsulating Cleo's internal struggles with queerness, gender, and the assorted struggles of puberty. The piece is succinct, and every player has at least one incredible moment to shine and show off their range. This is a wonderfully wild, delightfully specific, but broadly relatable play!

Pluck is an exceptional exploration of the messiness and stark clarity of burgeoning teen identity. Cleo's journal entries are heartbreaking and beautiful and the depiction of the chatroom scenes perfectly encapsulates the particular loneliness and questioning Cleo is experiencing. There is a feeling of myth, of lore and of unsettling loss in this play. Like all of Rosenberg's work, I'm chomping at the bit to see this onstage!

This play is a fantastic exploration of adolescence and growth and the horrors and surprises of transformation and identity. Jan’s dialogue is so funny and sharp and honest, and the script is peppered with monologues that plumb the depths of the protagonist’s quest. And the mom is hilarious and fantastic. Saw it at the O’Neill twice! You can’t keep me away ❤️

I saw a reading of this play at the O'Neill's National Playwrights Conference and I can't stop thinking about it. What I think is so wonderful about Pluck is that Jan is tackling so many topics we think about every single day in a single, tight, never-confusing play. My favorite through-line? The way our society's obsession with youth and size and sex is skewered during genuinely hilarious/upsetting online chatroom scenes. What can I say? You had me at Baby Hotel and Gaydar. Can't wait to see this play produced!

Dark, dangerous, sharp, and just scandalous enough to keep us on our toes, I adore this monstrous play. The twins are fascinating in their toxic, razor's edge intimacy. Cleo's relationship with gender dysphoria is refreshing, subtle, and expertly buried underneath the scandal of the chatroom scenes. Those chatroom scenes, too, feel at once dangerous and dramaturgically thrilling. Jesus, I'll be thinking about this play for a while. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

Beautifully done coming of age play that explores gender, gender identity, self image, body image, and the intersection of those things with adolescence. Jan Rosenberg mixes realistic and potent and poignant scenes with some fantastical and theatrically heightened elements to create an aesthetically cohesive and original play. Eager to see the development trajectory of this piece and a production of it up on its feet!

Rosenberg has a gift for writing teenagers. Loved this coming-of-age, horror play.