Recommended by Jessica Moss

  • Wolf/Girl
    3 Nov. 2023
    I really loved this. Totally contemporary but with almost fable-like elements that feel epic, mythological. Athletic and lyrical, it calls for great imagination and physicality and would be exhilarating for an audience (and a cast!). It has tremendous respect for its young audience, as the best TYA should.
  • BOX OF TEETH
    12 Jun. 2023
    Tori Rice has what I believe to be one of the greatest strengths of a writer: she LOVES her characters. She endows them with dignity and richness, she riddles them with flaws and mistakes, she gives them respect and patience. This piece captures a small moment between two people with truth and humour. Very sweet, and sad, and two great roles for actors. This would fit in well in any night of short plays and I think would prove moving and entertaining for actors and audiences alike.
  • Maybe For A Minute
    12 Jun. 2023
    Two extremely resonant themes in this sensitive, specific piece: one, the sadness and strangeness of former friendships, and two, how very much group projects suck. The love, the hurt, the anger, the questioning of a friend who has left and come back is so beautiful here. Intricate dialogue, and two great characters for young female actors, both rich with history, emotion, and truth. It feels like the conversations you can only have late at night, and the setting of a drive-in is evoked so strongly. I saw this with a young audience and they were palpably moved, and intrigued.
  • The Lost Girls
    3 Jun. 2023
    I am absolutely furious. I wish I had written this play. I wish I could be in this play. I wish this play had been an option for me to see (or better yet, be in) when I was younger. What do you want? Scary? Funny? Sexy? Horny? Angry? Mysterious? Wild? Emotional? Real? Fantastical? This has it. You have to do it. You just have to do it. Why are we doing other plays when plays as good as this are just out here? Stop wasting time. Give a talented group of young actors and your audience this gift.
  • The Light Keepers
    3 Jun. 2023
    I saw this with a group of 20-something actors and it's difficult to express how impacted and moved they were by this. They were laughing through tears, they gasped, they clapped, they were absorbed completely the whole time. It was SO incredibly resonant for them, and me. It's a beautiful, delicate play that balances science-fiction and poetry, comedy and drama, real worlds and things beyond our understanding so skillfully. It gives young actors incredible roles that let them both flex and develop their skills. A rare, singular, shining star of a play.
  • Power Play
    3 Jun. 2023
    All the tiny terrors that haunt rehearsal halls and conversations around bodies in performance are so truthfully presented in a play that also manages to be funny and angry and nuanced. I saw this with a group of college-age actors and the way related to the piece was palpable. If you work with young actors, you very likely have some who need this play, the opportunities it presents, and what it is saying. Great scenes, great monologues, great moments, great roles for women.... great play.
  • Minnesota
    3 Jan. 2021
    Oh my goodness me, this is special. A group of people all in different stages of being haunted. The past lives, consequences are made flesh, and the regrets we carry, even the threat of future regrets, are heavy and terrifying enough to ruin everything we have. I think many scenes stand alone if you're looking for scenework. But there's an accumulative power of the whole piece and an amazing moment of purgation at the end, so I hope it gets produced in its entirety: I think the evening would feel like the breath you take after you've been drowning.
  • Effect If Not Intent
    10 Nov. 2020
    This is such a beautiful play and a great take on a family drama, one where the political becomes personal, not only in how we interact with and think of each other, but how we create our ideas of ourselves. Every character is gifted with incredible humanity, which only makes the arguments they're making more compelling and thornier, and every character can also tell a really good joke (this is important). Also, the first act fight scene between Jake and Amelia is a really wonderful two-hander for two young actors.
  • Reykjavík
    27 Mar. 2019
    I mean, this is wonderful. It's magical and strange and funny and feels like travelling to another country....the limbo of being in 'not your home'. It literally takes us somewhere else. This is so so special. It already has a life and is getting productions, but I really can't stop thinking about it.
  • Bug Juice and Stoli
    3 Oct. 2018
    Come on, a play set at a summer camp is a really fun idea, and what better place to wrestle with the person you once were, the person you dreamed you'd be, and the person you ended up being? A wacky premise allows for lots of emotional honesty. It's exciting to read a play that offers lots of roles for women of all ages and types. And as a Canadian, always a thrill to see a shout-out to Moose Jaw, even in a fictionalized form.

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