Wake

by Stefani Kuo

Anna and Eloise are second-graders who lose their best friend and classmate Deidre in a kayaking accident that they survive. Wake begins at Deidre’s funeral and follows the friendship of these two girls played by preteen actors as their characters age from 8 to 64. Beginning with this early experience of death, the girls and their single parents, Wing and Corrie, become entangled in one another’s lives. The play...

Anna and Eloise are second-graders who lose their best friend and classmate Deidre in a kayaking accident that they survive. Wake begins at Deidre’s funeral and follows the friendship of these two girls played by preteen actors as their characters age from 8 to 64. Beginning with this early experience of death, the girls and their single parents, Wing and Corrie, become entangled in one another’s lives. The play explores where grief and love root in relationships, as these two families grow together and apart.

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Wake

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  • Ally Varitek: Wake

    As someone who finds herself unable to look at life without both melancholy and joy, this play feels rooted in something familiar yet not often given the space onstage. This is a bittersweet meditation on loss, from the seemingly small loss as distance grows in childhood friendships to true tragedy that you often don’t have words for until years later. I’m left in a contemplative space after reading this piece and would love to experience it together with an audience.

    As someone who finds herself unable to look at life without both melancholy and joy, this play feels rooted in something familiar yet not often given the space onstage. This is a bittersweet meditation on loss, from the seemingly small loss as distance grows in childhood friendships to true tragedy that you often don’t have words for until years later. I’m left in a contemplative space after reading this piece and would love to experience it together with an audience.

  • Nick Malakhow: Wake

    This is such a lovely, human, somewhat melancholic play about friendship, mortality, grief, and how our perceptions of/relationships to these things change and evolve over time. The theatricality of how Kuo plays with time and space is beautifully realized and integral to the storytelling. I loved how, even though some moments wound back and forth in the timeline, there was always a sense of forward momentum in this relationship between Eloise and Anna and a greater understanding achieved between characters and by audience/readers. I'd love to see this realized onstage!

    This is such a lovely, human, somewhat melancholic play about friendship, mortality, grief, and how our perceptions of/relationships to these things change and evolve over time. The theatricality of how Kuo plays with time and space is beautifully realized and integral to the storytelling. I loved how, even though some moments wound back and forth in the timeline, there was always a sense of forward momentum in this relationship between Eloise and Anna and a greater understanding achieved between characters and by audience/readers. I'd love to see this realized onstage!

  • Shaun Leisher: Wake

    A wonderful play about death and friendship. I'd love to see this produced one day. Brilliant choice by the playwright to have a child play the characters throughout their lives.

    A wonderful play about death and friendship. I'd love to see this produced one day. Brilliant choice by the playwright to have a child play the characters throughout their lives.