←Recommendations of Mere Waters

We work with what we have.

Gisella doesn't have much. Specializing in women's medicine, she's forced to treat female prisoners at Auschwitz with only a dirty table, rudimentary instruments, and her faith. It makes the horror of DEAD RINGERS seem civilized.

She also has limited information. What Gisella learns over the course of the play is harrowing even if you know what to expect from Dr. M. Blevins plants us in the middle of hell, then plummets us infinitely downward.

Elegant and harrowing.

This tense and intimate play is compelling from the first moments. The theatricality is sublime and consistently surprising. Genuine humor cuts through the heaviness of the content, showing genuine care for the audience. There isn't a single moment in this script that doesn't burn with urgency. Though the dialogue is gorgeous, this playwright knows when to embrace quiet and let bodies speak. I had to get up and pace a bit because I couldn't believe how smart this play is. Moving, beautiful work.

Holocaust narratives based on real-life survivors' stories can present a number of challenges for playwrights, but Blevins masterfully keeps her eye on the prize here, avoiding all the traps and taking us on a deeply moving, often funny, and thrillingly imaginative theatrical journey through the heart of darkness, asking deep moral questions in a place where morality itself feels like a luxury. Clever magical-realism devices and some thoughtful character doubling help shape Gisella Perl's story into something grippingly watchable, timeless, timely, and relevant. This is how you do it, folks. Brava.

"The moral universe had not so much decayed here. It had been inverted, like some black hole, under the pressure of all the Earth’s malice..." -Thomas Kennally, Schindler's [List]

Mere Waters deftly weaves the story of a gynecologist at Auschwitz with magical realism and matters of faith. It is an energetic testament to what people do in impossible situations.

What will we do to survive; what will we do to help others survive; can we remain moral in a moral-less time, and can we ever be clean? Mere Waters challenges us to ask these questions.

A woman put in an impossible situation is able to save the lives of so many. A historical work of fiction that speaks so much to our current times. I hope this play gets produced fully very soon.

What strikes me the most about "Mere Waters" is that it is both intimate and grand. Jillian Blevins masterfully tells the personal story of a doctor in Auschwitz; in the telling she gives us a broader picture of the horrors of the Holocaust. What sets this play apart is not only the subject matter — the story of a gynecologist in the camp — but the way Blevins tells it, with equal parts heart and horror. And some hope, in the form of Abigail and Hannah.
This powerful play should be seen by audiences everywhere.

Jillian Blevins writes urgent stories that need to be told and brought into the light. MERE WATERS is amazing in that regard and also special on several levels, starting with the inspiration of Gisella Perl's real-life and memoir about her time in Auschwitz. Hers is a heartbreaking story but also filled with glimmers of hope that the playwright cultivates and carefully expresses throughout. The characters of the Prophetesses are also expertly written here, providing comfort and wisdom for both characters and audience. This is a play that deserves all of its accolades and is not to be missed.

“We hear a rush of water—a waterfall, an ocean, a surging river. It is the sound of the WOMAN’s life.”

In the midst of some truly dark horror, this stage direction breaks forth like a beautiful beam of light.

Stark, brutal, but ultimately hopeful, MERE WATERS is about the impossible choices and risks one woman takes in order to not just ensure her survival of Auschwitz, but other women as well.

Theatrically and visually rich and ritualistic, it is not an easy play to read or sit through. Good! More plays should be as uncompromising as this.

Jillian Blevins has done an astounding miracle rendering the story of gynecologist Gisella Perl into devastating, stark, elevated theatre. The script is blunt and spends no time building anything immaterial, instead giving the tale a running start whilst character is revealed remarkably gently. The camp life (as ghastly and harrowing as it is) is taken as circumstance, forcing Perl to wield her own fate. Astonishingly, there are interims of resplendent poetry and elysian humanitarian perspective. Blevins truly is a born storyteller and dramatist. MERE WATERS should find its place among all dramas about prejudice, perseverance, and the dignity of women.

Tikkun olam, “repair the world.” Even under (or because of) the most horrific and despicable conditions, Dr. Gisella Perl is called on to summon her strength and skills to save others and thereby save herself. Jillian Blevins has written a brutally honest play that in spite of the horrors is also, beautiful, spiritual, and hopeful. MERE WATERS may be set in the past, but its relevance to current events can’t be denied. A brilliant and important work.