←Recommendations of The Pretender

Grief grabs a hold of you and never lets you go. You wake up with it, you sleep with it, you eat breakfast with it. But what do you do when it enters your open window and stares you in the face? Vargas has cleverly put us in this world and I am so glad to see how this is reacted to. The Pretender is not just commonplace, but also a wonderful metaphor for dealing with a loss. By the end I am sitting alongside Meche on that couch, I would LOVE to see this staged!!

At least grief comes in waves. What if your lost loved one literally followed you around? Vargas’ short play is a tremendous and tenderly surreal step into the horror of loss, grieving, and finding your way forward. The worldbuilding, too, does a superb job of giving us just enough information to determine the rules while allowing room for our imaginations to dream about the world outside of Meche's apartment.

The Pretender masterfully brings the audience into a world that is not quite our own while exploring the universal question: how should we grieve? I loved how the character of the Pretender functions as both a metaphor and a literal, otherworldly situation to be dealt with. The final image of this play is beautiful and haunting--I would love to see this staged!

Even with its uncanny elements, Samantha Vargas’ “The Pretender” is a touching and evocative short that speaks to the strange horror of grappling with loss. The presence of Pretenders provides both a compelling metaphor and a fascinating bit of world building. We are not alone in the universe, or our grief.