There’s something subtly affirming and mesmerizing about Alicia’s writing. How wonderful to be dropped into a story that feels like a stenographic record of an event that actually happened, instead of the fruit of a writer’s imagination and experience. Hilarious and moving in equal measure, this play is well worth your time!

As someone who lives in the same general area where this play is set, I had moments while reading this of feeling my own neighborhood rendered with uncanny authenticity. The action's mostly grounded in this slice-of-life feel, but our protagonist spends enough time ruminating on film and other cultural ephemera that those pieces of their internal world make their way onto the stage in surprising, elegant, and form pushing ways, culminating in a funny, devastating, theatrical portrait of an utterly singular individual, but this play achieves universality in its specificity. I saw more than a little of myself in Mayel.

This play is a coming-of-age story. This play is a coming-out story. But this play is also about being haunted by a Chicanx trans masc character actor, dueling your ex(?) best friend's ex-boyfriend for her honor with the fencing sword you picked up at the thrift shop earlier that day, and how coming home after you tried to "make it out" can feel like an early grave but it doesn't have to be if you make the choice to fight for the person you've become rather than slip back into the scared person you used to be. Incredible stuff.