←Recommendations of The Eighteenth Quinquennial Endlings Picnic

This is an incredibly unique piece with lots of room for creativity in design and staging. I'm so impressed with the big ideas, layered issues, and clear imagery that are accomplished in such a short amount of time. Last but not least, I imagine this as an absolute playground for actors; I can't wait to see so many different combinations of five stellar performers bring these animals and interactions to life.

Love the progression of this piece. The final song (which I personally have many fond memories in connection to) left me breathless. Brava.

It should be too unbearable to watch, even to contemplate - our current environmental crisis is bad enough, but to explore it through five sweet, soon-to-be-extinct animals having a sad little picnic?! And yet this magnificent piece is compulsively watchable (compulsively readable, anyway), brimming with revolutionary fervor, smart stagecraft, and unexpected humor. ("Not all frogs play banjo" is the best out-of-left-field laugh line I've seen in a good long while.)

What do you do when you are the last of your species? Meet up with other animals that are the last of their species. This is fun and touching and calls attention to the extinctions that march ever onward. Jillian creates compelling characters with enormous personalities, I would love to costume them! THE EIGHTEENTH QUINQUENNIAL ENDLINGS PICNIC is a great show with a timely message.

Having to consider the loss of friends is always a hard thing but Jillian has presented this with a wonderfully unique perspective. Several species gather to discuss their extinction but the unique twist brought in by Elizabeth (won't say what it is) leaves you with a stirring feeling of hope rather than one of sadness. The piece stands as one of entertainment, of provoking thought and one of warning to the humans responsible for these creatures being in the position they are. A truly wonderful construct!

We see it all the time in sci-fi: an alien being declaring “I am The Last of My Kind!” On Earth, in the animal kingdom, such creatures are known as endlings. When, just before a species reaches extinction, there’s only one left.

Blevins walks a seemingly impossible tightrope between adorable talking animals and the profound loneliness of being the last one, surrounded by other last ones. Not everyone is taking this lying down! But there’s a resonant sorrow (in some extraordinarily beautiful speeches) pervading the picnic.

I didn’t know “endlings” before.
Now I’ll never forget.

I love a play that works on many levels, and Jillian Blevins has given me a banger with this one: The Eighteenth Quinquennial Endlings Picnic is at once an environmental parable, a political allegory, a mournful family drama, and a warmly hilarious character-driven comedy. The distinctiveness of these characters' personalities and points of view is rich and charming, and the innocent playfulness of the set up (It's animals! Having a picnic!) combines with the deadly weight of the issues at hand (Creeping disaster! Death! Revolution!) to terrific effect. I wanna see this live, please. Someone see to that.

A picnic at the end of the world -- but whose world? That is the question.

The Eighteenth Quinquennial Endlings Picnic stages a compelling, poignant and darkly humorous reunion of animals who are beyond the point of being 'conserved.' There is real history and pathos to the characters brought together by Jillian Blevins, and the play is a powerful reminder of the cost of mankind's whims.

Gaea is truly due for some revenge, and these last holdouts for their species have conflicting feelings about a possible uprising. Excellent work, demanding to be staged.

There is much to love in this one-act script: the strong, distinctive characters and their voices; the tonal shifts from light-hearted to serious to the (bittersweet?) ending; the sections of beautiful contrapuntal dialogue; the conflicts and the stakes; the actions and choices the characters make; the theatricality. All of it comes from Jillian Blevins' skill, imagination, and empathy.

It's clear Blevins has conducted a lot of research, but more impressive to me is the emotional core developed for each character. "The Eighteenth Quinquennial Endlings Picnic" should receive many productions, and would be well-loved and -remembered by audiences and actors.