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Ricardo Soltero-Brown

Recommended by Ricardo Soltero-Brown

  • SKIN by Tanuja Devi Jagernauth
    2 Mar. 2018
    “ Jagernauth's short, sharp, deep, dark comedy about a malefic mother plays upon several razors' edges - balancing, proposing, suggesting an array of styles, stagings, and interpretations - with a script that might have put Dario Fo to the test, or Peter Handke and Martin McDonagh into a sweat; perhaps its potential is congenitally more W. C. Fields, Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, etc. No matter. However you decide to make it, 'Skin' holds onto its themes, with Jagernauth again investigating the (both literal and metaphorical) physical limitations of the body, the deconstruction, construction, donning, and doffing of one shell for another. ”
  • The Glass Cliff by Ellen Davis Sullivan
    26 Feb. 2018
    “ Lillian Hellman, I believe, would love this play; Ayad Akhtar, too, for that matter. However, I mention Hellman because she knew there were three integral Dramas: Death (Will they die?), Sex (Will they screw?), and Money (Who gets it?). Hellman knew men get to talk about everything on stage, and she said, No, I'm going to have women do it. Sullivan is equally as brave. Her play is about money, but with a dose of sex. This is an important piece about women in the world of men. One of the top plays that I've read on New Play Exchange. ”
  • Bodies by Rachel Bykowski
    21 Feb. 2018
    “ Certainly one of the most important, integral, and interesting relationships to discuss and dismantle in the investigation of gun violence, laws, and control. Bykowski makes a breathtaking move through her focus on a marine, a supposed killing machine, who - in fact - "gets it." The lust, temptation, and subjugation her "partner" commits to is bizarrely clear, tragically urgent, and absurdly recognizable. This play is insightful, courageous, clever, and brave. ”
  • Boulder Holder by Crystal Jackson
    19 Feb. 2018
    “ Twisted. Effective. Makes your stomach sink. ”
  • Mentally Ill / Gun Free by Jessie Salsbury
    19 Feb. 2018
    “ We owe so much to the parents of slaughtered children. We owe more to the children, that's the whole point that the mother in Salsbury's play is really making. She, the character, the woman, the mother of a child murdered in a school shooting, has sacrificed and she should be heard. It is ridiculous and gross and tragic and absurd that this character has found a way to connect and connect and connect with school after school after school. The dialogue here with a mother and, wouldn't you know it, a police officer is devastating. ”
  • Unanswered Questions by Everett Robert
    18 Feb. 2018
    “ This's certainly one of the most effective monologues concerning experience of a school shooting that I've read. The girl is angry and confounded and somehow makes sense - within her purge and journey - of the political arguments that are coming (or are soon to come) against her and those with what is her less-and-less unique position. She breaks down the absurdity of teachers obtaining and utilizing guns as a deterrent. More or easier access to violence in response to violence is simply not the answer. Everett Robert's monologue both blooms and oozes at the cracks. An enraging, fuming work. ”
  • SHELTER IN PLACE by Rachael Carnes
    17 Feb. 2018
    “ Carnes manifests a reflection that is at once all too clinical, crippling, heart wrenching, and - also -mobilizing. The breakdown of the rifle here is set against the breakdown of modern education and we are tasked with the question of which requires more focus, because the fact is the two are becoming - or, it could be argued, are currently - inseparable, bonded by blood. This is an urgent warning and a devastating rumination on what's worth protecting, what's worth allowing our children easier access to. ”
  • How We Live In Our Bodies Now by Darcy Parker Bruce
    17 Feb. 2018
    “ Darcy Parker Bruce has created a work of art that concerns and focuses itself so wholly on three states of being: knower of tragedy, survivor of tragedy, and victim of tragedy; the three states are personified by Viv, Langley, and Ollie respectively. Langley is in a delicate position, one where guilt and even a sense of debt are accrued to the point that a transmogrification, a transmutation, simply a transition must, must, must occur. I haven't read words like this since Naomi Wallace. A daring task to accept and leave the past in order to accept and enter the future. ”
  • PAYTON: A BACK-TO-SCHOOL MONOLOGUE by Asher Wyndham
    16 Feb. 2018
    “ A child's logic, by miracle, mystery, or mercy, is usually difficult to argue. Adults will introduce the concept of, "Well, when you're older," in order to exert or exercise some social construct of authority. The child's sense in Wyndham's shattering monologue stops us cold. Our society's youth is taking stock of its surroundings. Why do they have to survive this, why is the central subject here part of their performance, part of their integration, their education? This is an agonizing, confounding, distressing, frustrating, deceptively simple work. Honor the children. Listen to the children. What? Are you too afraid to argue? ”
  • Backfired (a monologue) by Lindsay Partain
    16 Feb. 2018
    “ Partain's monologue reminds us from start to finish how wrong it is for people this age to die. She effectively uses the polar opposites of love and hate to tell Anna's story. It's heartbreaking how little love needs, and absurd that hate has so many tools. ”

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