Recommended by Giulianna Marchese

This play made me think about the purpose of art. How many people do I need to share my art with to justify it? Can it just be for me? Theatre is inherently about sharing and community. I love how the play explores this theme through the lens of capitalism and the commodification of our art. We want our art to change the world. But to do that it must be shared. And you know who is great at disseminating things? Amazon. But convenience can become reliance.

I really enjoyed reading this play for Script Club with Red Theater. As I was reading, I got the feeling that there is so much dramaturgy to uncover in this play that would be so fun to get into and bring to light with staging and even a program note.
I was fascinated by the dialogue and how the characters seem to be talking past each other or only partially understanding. It would be so interesting to play with the dialogue in rehearsal.

Loved reading this play with Red Theater's Script Club. It inspired so many great observations of office culture. It was so fun watching the familiar personal barriers that you will find in a typical office break down. I would even say it was cathartic for me, having worked in so many cold office environments and realizing that I never knew my coworkers. Funny, Surprising, and relatable!

This is one of my favorite Greek tragedies. The original Iphigenia feels like a play about women trying to feel like they have agency in a world where they clearly have none. I love how this adaptation plays with the same ideas of free will and where our destiny ultimately comes from. It's a story about a family, but you get constant reminders of the policy decisions that lead this family here. I highly recommend giving this script a read!

Dan is a very skilled writer. There are so many powerful themes in this play. I was really struck by the idea of children as a force that binds a couple permanently in a way that marriage or co-habitation doesn't. The hamsters are literally in a cage together, but the thing that traps them is having children. Likewise, eating those children can be something you do out of love or a way to escape that relationship.

I loved thinking about this play as a Greek tragedy, but I also felt like there were many Brechtian notes. It is so intense and enraging to watch this story play out, that I get both a catharsis from this script and a drive to fix things.
This play resonates so much with everything happening in the news.

In a play about coal miners, I would expect the crux of the story to be black lung. But instead, it is ever present in the background. The characters cough and sometimes mention black lung, but it is not the main issue. Which feels so authentic. It's a reminder of how this disease effects everyone who goes into the mine. But it is so difficult to get compensation for it and the health issues that result from coal dust go ignored. This is a deeply important play about labor, family, and pride.

Red Theater read this play for our monthly script club and we were so happy to have Mora come talk to the group about it. This play could been done in so many different ways. I would love to see it with some cool theatrical tricks- projection mapping of the birds on the porch or a cat puppet. But it could just as easily be done with a very simple set.
I love that it is set in such a specific moment of the pandemic. I feel like I can place it so specifically. It's a very strong choice.

This play is so relatable as an artist. Especially the line "We have to stay in here to forget how insane this is." It made me think about how friends and family outside of theatre remind me how crazy my life choices are. But it is also about the beauty of pursuing something that feels unattainable. The risk of failure is what makes it worth the journey.
I was also very interested in the amount of physical dedication to the sport. As a play, it provides many really wonderful opportunities on the stage.