Recommended by Emma Goldman-Sherman

  • GREAT WHITE
    11 Jun. 2016
    Beautifully rendered characters, relationships portrayed with compassion and honesty. The language is evocative yet useful, and the place serves the play well as a real place and a metaphor that works to heighten our experience -- and there is a great intensity to the play that keeps us on the edge of our seats!
  • The Violet Sisters
    11 Jun. 2016
    Highly recommend this moving play about two sisters reunited for a funeral in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in Brooklyn, a wonderfully specific rendering of characters, female relationships, what is lost and what can be saved as they fight all the forces of a past that would keep them separated into their personal traumas. The play has great moments of humor and comedy and light in the midst of darkness. Humanity and hope shines through!
  • Breeders
    28 Apr. 2016
    Very funny conceptual comedy that works well on many levels. Giles provides crisp dialogue, a winning structure, characters to care for, and new ways to think about love. Well done!
  • THE DANGER OF STRANGERS
    14 Feb. 2016
    Wonderfully mysterious and exciting! The characters are compelling, and I love the way the structure works to show us different versions of the past that could motivate the events.
  • WAR IS FOR FORGETTIN' (Monologue)
    10 Sep. 2015
    Here is a beautiful piece of writing for a young man. A monologue full of specific sensory details, with a great sense of momentum. The character moves clearly from one sense of war and what he has lived through to another sense of things by the end of the piece, and we go with him. Well done!
  • Tryouts
    1 Sep. 2015
    Brilliant! The mothers are hilarious -- volunteering for everything even though they wish they could say no, starting a new religious order just to have a reason to get out, etc. -- and the girls are wonderful as they try to figure out how to be. The foreigner is my favorite though, because she gets to slaughter language in a new, fresh way and remind us all how strange our culture really is! On shopping/dressing/and being schooled to be a woman -- Adara hits every nerve I have, and then some.
  • HAPPI IN IOWA
    28 Aug. 2015
    The characters are wonderfully complex. Their needs are intense and hidden beneath their distinct languages. This is such a human play with each character in need of the other without any real ability to connect, and they have both failed each other already, so it is quite a feat for such a short piece to pack such a emotional turn, and yet it feels fresh and unforced.
  • The Offer
    26 Aug. 2015
    Would you go to Mars if you had the chance? This is a quick, fun, wacky office play, but in this office, the boss holds the key to Grace's dreams and her destiny. I love the way the twists and turns take Grace by surprise (and the audience goes with her)!
  • Night Blooms
    26 Aug. 2015
    Lyrical Southern historical family drama with a great story - the day of the Selma March - and characters bursting with the need to live their lives with more honesty and integrity than is usually allowed because of their own responses to this inspiring day in history. The metaphor of blooming works well for the two young female characters who are discovering their own vitality. Beautifully written.
  • The Griots
    23 Jul. 2015
    This is a wonderful historical drama full of twists and turns as the truth gets uncovered. The characters are marvelous in their needs and their humor comes organically. Nothing is ever forced. This is a poignant story that should be told.

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