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Meredith Bartmon

Recommended by Meredith Bartmon

  • As I Was, Not As I Am by August Hakvaag
    20 Aug. 2020
    “ It’s remarkable how developed August’s playwright voice is in relation to their journey. This mature instinct for how to tell stories mixed with youthful ‘fuck-it’ energy is exciting. The characters are relatable, especially the ‘antagonist’ - which feels honest. The play confronts how healthy young people deal with sickness and frailty when hit head-on by the reality of death. The final scenes of the play are so beautiful in their precision of character – Zarya flees, Melissa attacks, and steady Jeanine tries to hold on. While you’re here, I also highly recommend you read Acute Exposure. ”
  • Mountain Law by Melissa Leilani Larson
    20 Aug. 2020
    “ How do women survive the daily onslaught of white noise and isolation? Mountain Law takes a relevant POV on the individual’s flexible relationship with faith in the light of hardship and changing circumstances. Tamson is clearly a devout woman but she learns to be unashamed of her fallible humanity. Howard is strict in his beliefs but not immovable. It’s a resonant reminder that faith isn’t a monolith. Melissa writes in a beautifully balanced mix of narrative and theatrical storytelling. She asks the audience to observe a time and place they may be viewing too narrowly. ”
  • Paint Night by Carey Crim
    19 Mar. 2020
    “ Paint Night is a hilarious and beautifully woven story about how women support each other (or fail to) in an unpredictable world. The depth of each woman's pain is rendered in an uproarious and messily human night of drinking and painting. Crim has illustrated how life, family and friendship go on despite the terrifying encroachment of outside ills and uncertain times. ”
  • The Last Broadcast by Carey Crim
    6 Mar. 2020
    “ The Last Broadcast is an engrossing family drama with a mysterious secret. Carey Crim’s characteristically 'artful economy of dialogue' and patient pacing shines. By portraying a family that must learn to love one another in spite of sharp faults and mistakes, Crim invites the audience to remember the compassion of honesty in a harsh world. I was left with this thought; humans can attempt to deny their nightmares but the specter of trauma will haunt you until you find the courage to let the memory into the light. ”
  • With by Carter W. Lewis
    14 Oct. 2019
    “ With is a deeply affecting struggle against the inevitable surprise of death. At first, the audience laughs their way through the amusingly mundane problems of old age. As the play proceeds, we notice the character’s lives have become terrifying whirlpools of repetition. At what point do we actually die, when our hearts stop or when we stop engaging with our humanity? Minnie and Clifford are desperately trying to control death, to outsmart him. But the winter of our lives will come, the cold will win out, the story will go silent whether or not we bid it quiet. ”
  • Regular by Marjorie Muller
    14 Oct. 2019
    “ Marjorie Muller mines story from meticulously detailed and compassionately crafted characters. In Regular, Muller focuses the narrative intimately on the people. In the relationships Kate develops with Josie, Eric, Angela and PJ, Muller has artfully given the audience permission to measure a life in steady satisfaction rather than extraordinary suffering. The thorough and funny dialogue beautifully renders a woman learning permission to define her own joy. Through the window of Kate’s passing seasons, from the hard frost of her past to her blooming sense of belonging, the audience also feels renewed. ”
  • Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King by Sam Collier
    14 Oct. 2019
    “ Sam Collier writes about women and girls living outside the restrictions of society by transcending human limitations. In Daisy Violet, three sisters reject what society perversely prescribes as feminine morality by joyfully subverting what makes a hero and what makes a Bitch. Through absurdism, allegory, feminism, and meter, Collier celebrates the persistence of women and the optimism of children in an existentially ridiculous time. How does a girl take revenge on the world? What do we lose when we become adults? And in the real world can we survive, like Daisy and her sisters, through fury, imagination, camaraderie and joy? ”

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