Gina Femia has written a generous, deeply affecting play that made me laugh and ache in equal measure. Entirely original yet profoundly Chekhovian, it follows a community through finely drawn characters, each longing for something different from the same fragile theater. Small desires collide, time slips, humor breaks the heart. The play understands how hard it is to keep making art—and how necessary it becomes—when the future feels uncertain. It feels both rare and necessary.

What a beautiful piece -- both a (contemporary) comedy and a deeply felt, yearning, aching look at what theatre is and how human it is to want, even when there aren't words for that wanting. The mix of characters is so deft, referential without being reverential. I'm left with the kind of sadness that makes me, oddly, wildly happy, because This Is a PLAY. Marvelous.

The most Chekhovian play Chekhov didn’t write. Gina Femia has written a glorious collection of characters in this small community theater troupe, whose yearnings, embarrassments, peeves, and heartbreaks are small in scale and vast in emotional impact. Tempests in teapots, perhaps; but the care, attention, and love with which Femia observes these people remind us that each person is an entire world. Our lives matter, and in our frictions we are hilarious, ridiculous, wonderful, and profound.