←Recommendations of dis/member

River manages to capture the fear that plays in the mind of many queer men, and makes a very tragic moment palpable and real on the stage. The second man is a ghost that haunts the work and absolutely brings the horror to life.

When love demands that you show your teeth, your heart, and all, and someone takes that to the extreme - where does that leave you? (See: on the killing room floor). Timms offers us this severed, yet still bleeding, heart of a monologue play on a silver platter, from the mouth of their metaphorical "Preacher's Son". Their mastery of verse mixed with the raw emotion evokes the very feelings I felt when reading their playwright's notes: anticipatory fear, thrill, and heartbreak beyond words.

Yes. Yes yes. Yes yes yes. A twisted and horrific queer “rom-com” of sorts - unwavering in poetic macabre but not overwrought with flowery language. A stunning satire regarding the head vs. the heart in matters of love (both literally and figuratively). This is an imaginative and compelling dark piece that pushes the envelope and has a violently amorous theme.

There's such poetry and poignancy to this play that reducing it merely to its physical premise feels improper. The circumstances of River Timms' "dis/member" are gruesome, and the stage pictures it conjures are stark and bloody, but the play's language is dripping with truth, love, and exquisite, specific pain. Evoking Ethel Cain's "Strangers" and many of its stated influences, "dis/member"'s dangerous and intimate narrative will haunt you and break your heart.

"these are the consequences of caring"
Within a gristly premise, Timms finds an altogether different kind of 'visceral' sensation -- the gory action and the intimately tender reflection of longing, self-destructive desire, and passion (in both the romantic and Biblical sense). It's beautiful in its deceptive depth and its straightforward audacity. A bloody, beautiful gem.