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Ian Thal

Recommended by Ian Thal

  • Highly Entropic Beings by Monte D. Monteleagre
    30 May. 2020
    “ The mind attempts to impose meaning and structure on this script, but part of the joy is how "Professor Dank's" script, like the universe itself, resists all such attempts. What appears to be a metaphor may or may not be. Can a stage be flooded with a metaphor? Another joy are characters with names like "The Neck of a God", "Whole Lotta’ Microns", and "Baby Giraffe with Shorter Legs". Will some student theater troupe in an act of rebellion against everything they've been taught attempt it? ”
  • High Water Line by Victoria Z. Daly
    30 May. 2020
    “ A dark apocalyptic comedy about environmental destruction our species cannot afford, that might very well be impossible to stage because of the fourth-wall-breaking destruction most theaters cannot afford to simulate. It's exciting just imagining how it could possibly be done according to Daly's specifications! ”
  • Very First Kiss by Matthew Weaver
    28 May. 2020
    “ A myth about the invention of the kiss by our early human ancestors. It is about those most visceral of human needs, and the most visceral ways of fulfilling them: hunger, sex, aggression, violence, bloodshed, sharing, tenderness. There are so many possibilities for staging: Physical theater styles as clowning or mime, puppetry, a cantastoria with narration, even animation, that a festival of disparate stagings is imaginable. ”
  • Busking (short play) by David Hansen
    9 May. 2020
    “ Having busked as a mime, I can say that Hansen well-captures that absurd desperation that sets in with the uncertainty of whether the audience has the understanding or attention-span for one's chosen art form -- made even more extreme when the audience has disappeared from the venues (in this case, public spaces like the street). The stage directions show an appreciation for the mime idiom and leave room for a skilled performer's own inventiveness. ”
  • MY MONSTER AND ME by Natalie Osborne
    27 Apr. 2020
    “ Great potential for inventive physical theater or puppetry -- exemplified by the line, "the rest of you that isn’t a hand doesn’t look like a hand" -- but it would be spoilers to say who says it! ”
  • Timbuktu by B. E. Turner
    25 Apr. 2020
    “ In Timbuktu, B.E. Turner's language, imagery, and sequences of action are wonderfully playful and draw our attention to the usually unexamined conventions of dining in a restaurant and of going to the theater. By breaking so many of the rules and rituals we take for granted we see just how arbitrary they really are. It's hilarious! ”
  • Hot/Mess by Jen Huszcza
    21 Apr. 2020
    “ Hell is a bureaucracy with corrupt managers, long lines, and under-appreciated clerical staff. ”
  • Snakes by Jen Huszcza
    21 Apr. 2020
    “ Wonderfully surreal comedy featuring anthropomorphic snakes, rendering their reptilian psychology and physiology into dialogue and stage directions. The fun comes from finding the metaphors for the human experience. ”
  • A History by Susan Hansell
    21 Apr. 2020
    “ The absurd is political in this satire on misogyny. Despite serious subject matter, Susan Hansell playfully uses physical theater, onomatopoeia, and visual puns to cleverly get her points across while prompting some uncomfortable laughs. ”
  • From Minsk to Manhattan by Faith de Savigné
    19 Apr. 2020
    “ A dark feminist-existential comedy about authoritarianism, and the commodification of sex, and lallygagging as resistance. De Savigné has a fiercely ribald wit and knows how to read a map! ”

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