←Recommendations of Imperfect Storms

I was fortunate enough to see this play at the 2024 Midwest Dramatists Conference in Kansas City. This is the story of a romance between a man and...something else...in the midst of a tremendous, life-threatening, storm. A very imaginative short by Mr. Sickles that shows love can come in many forms.

A sad little love story between a man and his cryptid. The fact that you can feel so much for these two lovers as the deal with a great flood, the mortality of only one of them, and what the cost of love is.

This play had a staged reading at the Midwest Dramatists Conference. Sickles’ treatment of the extraordinary is so heartfelt you forget it’s fantastical. The relationship he crafts in this short are so real, it makes me want to believe in compassionate monsters. I particularly appreciated the imagery and the corresponding sound and set possibilities. A lovely and unexpected love story.

The Shape of Water? I hardly know ‘er!

In all seriousness, Imperfect Storms is a powerful, imaginative fantasy that dunks us into the deep end of a star-crossed relationship and the chaos of a natural disaster and only gives us ten minutes to find our sea legs—or arms, as the case may be. I love Sickles’ use of specificity, from the mechanics of Kelian’s biology to the unique heartbreak of Louis being unconscious for one of the last times he will ever be carried. This play will sweep you away, and make you not want to let go.

Scott Sickles has created a beautiful modern fairytale that packs a powerful and lovely punch. I love love LOVE everything he writes!

I'm breathing deeply and holding back tears from this magical play about very real tragedies and heartbreaks. It somehow makes the loss of love that much more tragic. Especially when the love didn't die, it just couldn't fit in this corner of time anymore. That is the worst loss of all...just beautiful. A painting of words.

A very imaginative play that shows the bonds of love and the complications that both circumstances and nature can throw at it. The playwright deftly avoids any easy answers, and follows the characters to a satisfying conclusion. An evocative setting and non-conventional characters make this an intriguing piece.

IMPERFECT STORMS is a cinematic two-hander about lost love, identity, and survival. Scott Sickles keeps a tight focus on the relationship as a dangerous flood rages outside and threatens to collapse the building that Louis and Kelian are sheltering in. Their relationship is over but there is still love and understanding. This is a thrilling heartbreaker.

Things fall apart at the worst times (then again, is there ever a GOOD time for things to fall apart?) and Scott Sickles shows us two characters who lose their footing in very different ways. Louis loses both a relationship and almost his life. Kelian also loses the relationship, but through his choice which brings its own instability. Both characters come vividly to life here as Sickles presents some real stakes here. The loss on both sides is palpable. This is wonderful writing and deserves a shot on stage.

A heartbreaking yet strangely hopeful play about two lovers whose relationship can not survive, a fate unrelated to the catastrophe unfolding around them. Scott Sickles grounds this story of a human and a mythical creature in the unfortunately real world of a planet undergoing a climate crisis. The stakes are life-and-death, but even by the play's last page he gives a glimmer of hope that the lovers' breakup isn't the end of the world. Manmade climate change is.