←Recommendations of The Battlements

What I love about this piece besides basically everything is how it plays in so many spaces at the same time (suspense, romance, travelogue) without seeming over-stuffed or unsure of what it is. And what it is is a marvelously unique piece about connections, disconnections, and all the heartbreaks in between. The sense of place is very real yet playful at the same time, and it offers us "fish out of water" characters played without all of the stock tropes. Sickles just never fails to dazzle.

Don’t you just love to dive into a script and know by the end of the first page that you’re in capable hands? It’s always immediately evident with the work of Scott Sickles. He writes dialogue and characters steeped in authenticity. In The Battlements, he takes us to a different world with dazzling theatricality and gives us a budding love story between two strangers who are united by their immersion in a new land but also by their similar past traumas. This play is moving. It’s beautiful.

Scott Sickles has done it again. He wrote a damn masterpiece. Again. And this time, my jealousy gets to be bilingual. Ai~ ssi! This is a beautifully constructed play with a tension that builds and builds. As always, I am in awe of how Scott’s dialogue delivers the very core of his characters with such ease and accessibility. Even in Korean. So..sure… kudos to Scott Sickles. But know I am still grumpy about how good this is.

Light and darkness and projections play an integral part in this play, and not just from a theatrical design sense. The carefully crafted story of Martin and Bianca, who each have their reasons for hiding from their past and reluctant to explore the future, is told in a way that builds suspense to a Hitchcockian level but without the overwrought tension. The sense of danger is always present but never horrifying and that makes it all the better. It's theatre-noir.

Scott Sickles' The Battlements is a lot of contradictory things at once: gorgeous, ominous, unnerving, and charming, to name a few. A sweet, unsettling, sorrowful, and beautiful story of how the proximity, threat, and memory of violence steers the lives of two wary strangers in a strange land. The Korean setting and language are specific and inviting, the use of music lush and emotional; most winning of all is the disarming dialogue that draws us in to these two immensely likable characters. 브라보

A very moving experience. I truly dig the comprehensive vision Scott brings to the page; it is imagery, sound and music, lighting (darkness), and language that ensure this will be a fabulous theatrical experience. The themes that hit me the most: undercurrents of violence and evil, the past as a force, pursuing (stalking) and lying in wait for you at every turn. 'Take the day to find the hope in your lives that exists.' And the play is not a downer! The characters march on, as we all must.

The idea of going missing and no one noticing is just the start of the underlying complexity of the human experience which Sickles addresses in this play--the wide scale of human emotion and potential for violence underscores (pun intended) this international, cinematic story woven throughout with the Korean language and classical music. Great moments for a lighting/projection designer. Fun (and shocking) allusions to the Korean film industry and references to Korean mothers provide welcome moments of humor. I especially appreciated the two lonely expats, looking all at once to escape and connect.