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Jillian Blevins

Recommended by Jillian Blevins

  • My Beloved, My Axiom by Aly Kantor
    20 Dec. 2022
    “ Where do faith and optimism end, and delusion and recklessness begin? MBMA’s lovers leap over “meet cute” and land squarely in “meet deranged”—and what a delight it is. Aly Kantor just might be the master of twisted romantic comedy. ”
  • HERO DOGBERRY by Monica Cross
    20 Dec. 2022
    “ HERO/DOGBERRY offers all the charms of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with a shrewdly feminist edge. This companion piece to Much Ado About Nothing reimagines Hero as a protagonist with agency, wit, and fortitude rivaling heroines like Viola and Rosalind. It also addresses Claudio’s maddening lack of accountability in Shakespeare’s play through a climactic scene that’s both satisfying and heart-rending.

    Monica Cross deploys an impressive mastery of verse in HERO/DOGBERRY; more than once, I had to check the source material to be sure whether a line was hers or Shakespeare’s. ”
  • RED PEN, GREEN INK by Monica Cross
    18 Dec. 2022
    “ So many of us underestimate children, and in doing so, we often get their voices wrong. However, Monica Cross, in her play, gets the experience of childhood exactly right: the intensity of feeling, the rapidly expanding minds, and the powerful desire to make sense of ourselves and our world. ”
  • Wheel of Fortune Reversed by Scott Sickles
    18 Dec. 2022
    “ Sickles’ “fun meditation”—an apt descriptor for this powerful two-hander—begins with a clever twist on the “game of chess with Death” trope. The game appears at first as playful, philosophical banter, but, like the play itself, the heartfelt vulnerability beneath newly-dead Michael’s intellectual exterior gradually reveals itself. Without offering easy answers or cloying platitudes, WOTR’s moving ending left me feeling comforted and hopeful in the face of our unknowable end.

    Written to be played by actors of any age, race, gender or ability, Sickles’ characters are at once universal and specific. A perfect 10-minute play. ”
  • for the fish by Surrey Houlker
    15 Dec. 2022
    “ The best magical realism blurs the line between objective reality and world as experienced by its characters. FOR THE FISH possesses this dream-like ambiguity, and in doing so, allows us direct access to its characters’ tender, searching hearts.

    The unspoken bond of queerness between Susanna and her Uncle anchors this play. The subtlety and specificity of their relationship stands in effective contrast to the surreally theatrical talking fish who threatens it. Houlker creates a strong sense of time and place with her expressive stage directions. Designers, puppeteers, and imaginative theatre makers will thrill to take a crack at it. ”
  • CYRANO ON THE MOON by Monica Cross
    7 Dec. 2022
    “ In CYRANO ON THE MOON, Monica Cross offers the pen to Roxanne, object of Cyrano de Bergerac’s idealized love. With two young nuns, she conjures an afterlife for Cyrano. Is it merely to memorialize him? To understand what she herself has lost? Or can Roxanne, through her writing, guide her lost love towards an understanding that will finally allow them to be happy together?

    Uniquely theatrical and deeply felt, CYRANO ON THE MOON captures the spirit of its source material and puts Cross’ linguistic prowess and nuanced feminist perspective on full display. ”
  • The Hollow Fool by Christopher Soucy
    4 Dec. 2022
    “ Christopher Soucy’s play, like its titular Shakespearean fools, deploys every kind of comedy; witty wordplay, philosophical absurdities, pithy observations, and the obligatory dick jokes. Most importantly (and centrally to THE HOLLOW FOOL’S soul), the Bard’s canonical clowns balance humor with an underlying melancholy and incisive truths about human nature. In his multifaceted Stoppardian adventure, Soucy manages it all, and then some.

    FOOL gallops along through no fewer than four Shakespeare plays, bringing their disparate fools together in a poignant understanding: that there is no higher honor than creating joy, and no greater folly than killing for power. ”
  • Prometheus Shrugs by John Bavoso
    3 Dec. 2022
    “ What’s more painful: maintaining a relationship that’s no longer working, knowing it won’t change, or ending it and facing the unknown without your other half? John Bavoso explores this relatable question through the myth of Prometheus and his unenthusiastic torturer. Full of witty references for fans of Greek mythology (my personal favorite: Hercules’ “12-step program”) and hilariously groan-worthy puns for the rest of us, PROMETHEUS SHRUGS is a tightly-written, wholly original fractured-fairy-tale of ennui and bittersweet endings. ”
  • The Heath by Lauren Gunderson
    1 Dec. 2022
    “ Banjo + Shakespeare = perfection. I was lucky enough to see this piece performed at MRT in 2018. Gunderson’s metatheatrical autobiography invites us into her very real struggle to reconcile her conflicting feelings about her grandfather, with whom she shared a deep connection but differed from in many important ways (his holy text is the Bible; hers is Shakespeare). The storm of Lear’s madness is a powerful metaphor for her grandfather’s Alzheimer’s, and Gunderson’s transformation into first Cordelia and then The Fool allows her to try to enter his world and get answers about their relationship. ”
  • THE LOVE ASTRONAUT by Charles Scott Jones
    29 Nov. 2022
    “ The mad genius of CS Jones’ work is how, even at its most bizarre, it remains grounded in emotional truth. The effect allows us to recognize our own strangeness, and to feel a bit less alone in it. That same push-pull between the stratosphere and the truth of the body (and the heart) is perfectly exemplified in this play.

    THE LOVE ASTRONAUT’s film documentary convention allows his character’s diverse perspectives on the same moments to collide with that of their audience, reveling in the irony and contradiction created. A director’s playground, and a fight choreographer’s dream! ”

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