←Recommendations of Bump-->Set-->Spike-->Bruise

I saw the reading of Bump-->Set-->Spike-->Bruise at the 2025 OOB Festival in NY, and it was everything I look for in a short play: unique, engaging, and capturing a whole world in just a few minutes. It's delightfully balanced between grounded realism and delightful theatricality, and captures the authentic feeling of those pre-adolescent and adolescent years in an incredibly winsome way!

Bump-->Set-->Spike-->Bruise beautifully captures the evolution of a relationship through the lens of sports, gender, and personal growth. With clever wordplay and a tender exploration of queer love, this play subtly examines the complexities of connection and the passage of time. Heartfelt and powerful!

The intersectionality of sports and gender is such a hot button topic right now, and one that is close to my heart, so I was very glad to see it explored so tenderly here. I also love that this play feels so big in its smallness in the way all things do when you’re a teenager. Well done on several levels!

A great short play chronicling the relatiopnship between two girls that meet as volleyball partners and always find themselves connected by the sport. I liked how you only get short glimpses into the lives of these characters. You get the feeling that a lot happens in between each time jump but the playwright wisely reveals just enough to keep us engaged. I really enjoyed the clever rhyming and word play that these characters always come back to no matter how old they get or how strained their relationship is.