←Recommendations of Every Living Thing

  • Lainie Vansant: Every Living Thing by Leroy Hood
    “

    I got to see a Zoom reading of this play for 2025's GPTC, and it was a deftly balanced emotional ride. The comedy is layered in nicely with big, important themes and questions the play poses but doesn't try to answer. What or who is God? How much should we try to help one another? How do we feed both our physical and spiritual selves? Sometimes pursuing the answers to these questions makes our characters look ridiculous, but I appreciated their honest pursuit of the answers. Beautiful work.

    I got to see a Zoom reading of this play for 2025's GPTC, and it was a deftly balanced emotional ride. The comedy is layered in nicely with big, important themes and questions the play poses but doesn't try to answer. What or who is God? How much should we try to help one another? How do we feed both our physical and spiritual selves? Sometimes pursuing the answers to these questions makes our characters look ridiculous, but I appreciated their honest pursuit of the answers. Beautiful work.

    ”
  • Karen Jean Martinson: Every Living Thing by Leroy Hood
    “

    A funny, moving play built around a lead character who is oddly likeable despite all of her annoying traits! Whitney is just SO Whitney, and she undertakes a terrible act in order to "save" Nitya. And yet she also tries to learn from her, even if she cannot accept Nitya's vow. Like many of Leroy's plays, ELT grapples with the beliefs we hold, the traumas we carry, the friendships we foster, and the way we seek to find meaning in our lives.

    A funny, moving play built around a lead character who is oddly likeable despite all of her annoying traits! Whitney is just SO Whitney, and she undertakes a terrible act in order to "save" Nitya. And yet she also tries to learn from her, even if she cannot accept Nitya's vow. Like many of Leroy's plays, ELT grapples with the beliefs we hold, the traumas we carry, the friendships we foster, and the way we seek to find meaning in our lives.

    ”
  • Straton Rushing: Every Living Thing by Leroy Hood
    “

    Perhaps it is a bit cliche to say well-written characters "feel like real people". But in the case of Hood's play, there really is not a more succinct way to describe this story's greatest strength. All three of these characters have fascinating layers that are slowly peeled back as the story progresses. This play asks hard questions of its audience about life, death, and the responsibility we have to one another.

    Perhaps it is a bit cliche to say well-written characters "feel like real people". But in the case of Hood's play, there really is not a more succinct way to describe this story's greatest strength. All three of these characters have fascinating layers that are slowly peeled back as the story progresses. This play asks hard questions of its audience about life, death, and the responsibility we have to one another.

    ”
  • Parker Davis Gray: Every Living Thing by Leroy Hood
    “

    There’s an impossible question at the center of this play that forces you to stay engaged and wrestle with it - which makes for an exciting moment of theatre. Every Living Thing is an affecting and touching play about the sanctity of life and the addictions and pains that stop us from actually living it. Leroy’s play also has three great characters that actors of those types rarely get to play.

    There’s an impossible question at the center of this play that forces you to stay engaged and wrestle with it - which makes for an exciting moment of theatre. Every Living Thing is an affecting and touching play about the sanctity of life and the addictions and pains that stop us from actually living it. Leroy’s play also has three great characters that actors of those types rarely get to play.

    ”