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"BOATS ON A RIVER, a new play by Julie Marie Myatt, can be distinguished both by what it is and by what it is not. What it is, is a play by an American playwright that reaches beyond the borders of this country, to examine life in other parts of the world and to use that examination as a prism to reflect back on our own culture. In that regard, it is a singularly refreshing departure from the navel-gazing that occurs in much of American theater. What it is not, is melodramatic or pat or clichéd or shrill. And for a play that deals with the trafficking of young girls in the Cambodian sex trade, it deftly works in a quasi-journalistic fashion to tell its story palatably without diminishing or glossing over the horror of its subject matter. Myatt traveled to Cambodia to create a fictionalized story of an American who runs a center that pulls girls out of prostitution. Sidney Webb has clearly gotten too close to his job and, after 15 years at it, is on the verge of burnout. His condition isn't helped when a headstrong American blows into town, raids a brothel and drops a trio of his "rescues" -three girls ages 13, 8 and 5-into the already over-crowded center. Plus, Sidney is having difficulties with his wife, a Vietnamese woman scarred by her own past in the sex trade. The script ranges all over the place-attempting to climb into Sidney's head, examining the circumstances and attitudes of the young girls, even giving an unflattering glimpse of an American tourist awash in his own sense of entitlement and willfully ignorant about life in Cambodia and his own small-but-damning contribution to the sex trade. Myatt calls for adult actresses to play the young prostitutes, an obviously necessary concession and one that allows audiences just enough distance to absorb her thematics without recoiling in revulsion.… But Myatt also conjures a final stage image that hammers the play home with heart-stopping clarity. …If it gets to our heart a bit too much through our head, BOATS ON A RIVER still has a certain poignant grace to it as a story of those struggling mightily to do the right thing against a vast, invisible and diabolical machine."Dominic P Papatola, Twin Cities Pioneer Press

"…Myatt excels at using small details to evoke larger truths.… BIRDER explore[s] fatherhood, mortality, the post-recession economy and the illusory nature of the American dream… BIRDER revels in quirky, meta-theatrical artifice, complete with flashbacks, overt symbolism and fourth-wall puncturing monologues. Its protagonist, the accountant Roger, is a poor excuse for a dad…. Roger has always played by the rules in pursuit of an affluent lifestyle. Like so many in the disappearing middle class, Roger grapples with the pressures of living beyond his means; his atypical answer to midlife crisis, however, is to quit his job and take up bird watching…. Roger maintains a disarming boyish charisma as he chronicles how the growing appreciation of birds hiding in plain sight among us come to represent everything else that's missing from his life. …[BIRDER] offers a quiet vision of hard-won hope amid adversity…"Philip Brandes, Los Angeles Times

"WILLISTON by Adam Seidel is a fresh piece of theatre that successfully shines a light on the power of greed and money in modern day America. Three leasing reps travel to Williston, North Dakota to get mineral rights to the last big piece of undeveloped land.… I was thoroughly impressed with the play. …a story that is relevant and fresh."Brian Stanczak-Tuscany, Broadway World "Something's not quite right in the small town of Williston, North Dakota. That much is obvious just from the fact that oil company deal closers Barb and Larry are expected to share quarters in a trailer camp setting. And how is it that their parent company didn't let them know that they were sending a new numbers guy, Tom to bring in the lease on one of the largest and possibly most productive tracts of land? After all, the killer team of Barb and Larry has been working for years on "Indian Jim," the Native American holdout who is reluctant to allow drilling on his land. Playwright Adam Seidel crafts a nifty three-hander where everything and everyone is not as it seems.…"Lauren Yarger, theaterlife.com

A man and a woman meet for the first time on an internet date. Nearby another man and woman meet to end their marriage. One coffee shop. Two couples. A million chances to settle the score. In the comedy CHANGES IN THE MATING STRATEGIES OF WHITE PEOPLE, playwright Solange Castro explores urban dating, technology, love and sex in contemporary Los Angeles. "Solange Castro's delightfully nimble piffle of a play… Solange's perky satire of device-era dating is largely about the plight of the self-absorbed…"Steven Leigh Morris, L A Weekly "Inspired by the mishaps and half-hearted personalities of the L A Internet dating scene, CHANGES tells the story of two couples. Jade and John are trying to get it on after their introduction over the web, while Louise and Tyler, a recently divorced older couple, are trying to keep it going.… Castro's CHANGES lives in a universe adjacent to that of the hysterical neurotics of Woody Allen's cinematic canon and one-act plays-flawed folks who cry about their vacancies, only to realize too late that what they're looking for is right in front of them."Anthony D'Alessandro, L A Weekly

Combat photojournalist Matthew Milton is charged with flying from Afghanistan to pick up his sister, Lizzie, after a two month stint in rehab for heroin addiction. Lizzie's wealthy Connecticut lifestyle is no match for her desire to get high, and Matthew's own addiction to war is masked by his sense of duty to show the public the truth behind our endless wars. With no where else to stay, Sergeant Mac Johnson, just retired, comes home to stay with Matthew, in a building full of fellow photojournalists. The subject of one of Matthew's documentaries, Mac reveals that Matthew's search for the truth, came at the expense of Mac's sense of self, life and privacy. Both drugs and war prove inescapable addictions, in a nation that continues to both feed and hide them.

"…In returning to a familiar theme, the wandering away from and abandonment of small town America to seek fortune and enlightenment, Myatt scores by unusually and effectively staying with those who have been left behind rather than with the one who has left. The result is a beautifully written reflection on time and place, and the inconstancy of love and loss.… The play follows the investigations of a private detective hired by a couple to find their grown son. As he interviews assorted friends and a mysterious stranger, he finds that nothing is quite what it seems. And in the process, as so often happens to theatrical detectives, he experiences a significant transformation. With few exceptions, each of the roles is carefully written, and several of the characters are vividly and imaginatively conceived.…" Laurence Vittes, A P

"…Myatt excels at using small details to evoke larger truths.… JOHN IS A FATHER explore[s] fatherhood, mortality, the post-recession economy and the illusory nature of the American dream… In impeccably spare dialogue rarely longer than single-sentence exchanges, fragments of John's troubled past come to light during his encounters on a trip to reconnect with what's left of his estranged family.… It's utterly compelling naturalism rendered with economy and grace…. Myatt's new play offers a quiet vision of hard-won hope amid adversity.…" Philip Brandes, Los Angeles Times

For many urban dwellers, daily life includes walking the dog surrounded by strangers and neighbors for whom you have only a passing acquaintance, whose personal stories you can only guess, imagine, or project upon them through the various waves hello, small talk about the the weather, or random gestures of kindness. What happens when you cross through the threshold of strangers, into their apartment? What stories have they been keeping behind their doors, no one ever sees? Frank Gromke has kept his family and his Holocaust past from his neighbor Harriet, until his son Aaron is forced to come live with him after a motorcycle accident. Living with Frank's trauma, miraculous survival, and relentless will to overcome his pain, has overshadowed Aaron's ability to experience his own emotions, loss, and suffering. When Harriet accepts an invitation for a cup of afternoon tea with Frank, she and her dog, along with a food delivery man named Douglas, become the catalyst for a reckoning between a lost son, with his heroic father. Sometimes being witnessed by strangers is the only way a family can witness each other, tell the stories they long to tell, and be heard.

ONLY IN AMERICA is oracular, mythic, wicked satire, with outrageous humor and provocative subject matter. In this play, Aishah Rahman achieves a synthesis of Jazz and secular speech, as she creates a language for America's "invisible women".ONLY IN AMERICA is set in an imaginary Animal Bureau of Civil Rights in Washington DC, and was written, in part, in reaction to Anita Hill's testimony about working with Clarence Thomas.

WHEN SOMETHING WONDERFUL ENDS explores the loss of one's mother, America's dependence on foreign oil, and Barbie dolls in an ingenious, whimsical, touching, funny, infuriating manner that only playwright Sherry Kramer could achieve. While packing up her parents' home following the death of her mother, Sherry uncovers the treasure trove of Barbies from her baby-boom childhood while embarking on the homework of a lifetime: discovering the roots of Islamic hatred of America and our dependence on the oil in the Middle East. As a Jewish girl growing up in the epicenter of the Bible belt, Sherry knows a thing or two about religious fervor and the passions it engenders."While she putters around putting Barbie paraphernalia into boxes, our hostess neatly ties together the personal and the political, yoking her own history to the mess of current global politics and a loss of faith in the American ideal. Quirky and informative." -Christopher Isherwood, The New York Times"As the actress telling Kramer's story packs up the Barbie artifacts of a Baby Boomer youth, the playwright explores both childhood fantasy and grown-up loss, as well as offering a step-by-step theory of why so many in the Arab world have come to hate the United States … it is, bottom line, a moving and provocative piece." -Christine Dolan, Miami Herald"Recounting her quest for the moment our way of life began unraveling, playwright Sherry Kramer's remarkable monologue moves between 1963 and now, between Tehran and Springfield, MO, between radicalized mullahs and vintage Barbies, to unearth truths about America's pursuit of Middle Eastern oil and her personal history, before arriving at her mother's grave and the intersection of geopolitical interests and individual responsibility. As timely as it was revealing and as witty as wise." -Robert Faires, The Austin Chronicle"In her incisive one-woman, autobiographical play. Playwright Sherry Kramer recalls coming of age, the death of a beloved parent, Judaism, the Middle East crisis and a concise history of the durable Barbie doll … Making Barbie a pivotal character in her narrative, playwright Kramer writes with a fluid hand that balances grief, conflict and the innocence of youth." -Robert Daniels, Variety

"There's not a lot of fat to trim in KRISIT, a satire on Hollywood…. Skewering the greed, vanity and bloated egos of Hollywood types is an easy target that has been done more times than Krisit's crow's-feet. But York's script has plenty of clever quips…." Robert Dominguez, Daily NewsWhat is "Krisit"? … a reclusive and peevish former movie star who hasn't left her home in 25 years. When the show opens she's lolling in her tub, wearing make-up and flashy jewels and being the sharp, brooks-no-argument grand dame with her new maid Lulu. Lulu is clearly role-playing. She's entirely too knowledgeable about who's who and who's doing what to who in Hollywood. She reads the industry press a little too avidly and she's awfully eager to lure Krisit out of retirement. In no time Lulu is taking a meeting with director Peter, who has a history with Krisit, and a stalled career that makes him desperate to have a project green-lighted. York uses the set-up to have fun commenting with engaging (and occasionally brutal) honesty on many things, including the insults of aging. Krisit has a leakage issue; Peter trades in wives for younger models to convince himself he still has whatever it is he needs to tell himself he has… York's voice is distinct as she reminds us how myopically we see ourselves even as we are blind to key truths; and about our relentless pursuit of ambitions which are generally not worth relentless pursuit. York also shows off a demented imagination with things like her solution for what to do with liposuctioned fat… Jackie Demaline, Cincinnati Equirer

This chilling whodunnit is about a woman who runs "Mystery Weekend Tours" at Coldblood Cottage, her ancestral home. Paying guests costume themselves as their favorite crime character and follow a fascinating path of clues, motives, and alibis. When a real murder happens, suddenly it's not so clear where the game has ended.

A wealthy woman invites two strangers to join her in a strange feast commemorating the death of her parents. Mayannah has done this every year but her dark purpose remains unclear. All that will change tonight when two damaged souls find their way to her table. Taking place in a not-so-distant future, the sounds of a war-torn Los Angeles fill the air. Tensions rise, true colors are revealed and the main course is not the only thing with claws…"… Rivera's teasingly engrossing stage reality … It's a return to the postapocalyptic landscape this most magical-realist of major American playwrights has explored in such compelling works as MARISOL and REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT, among his many plays … Rivera eschews external surreal symbols this time to delve directly into the chaos of his characters' disordered minds. The result is both an engrossing descent into the traumatized inner realms of three very different, isolated women … Each flight of concentrated poetry is vividly written … Rivera has created an intriguing and evocative drama with the social and psychological terrors that have leapt from the grottoes of the women's minds." -Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle"… This real-time drama … unfolds beautifully and offers great insight into how basic human nature desires can go bizarrely astray when the world is falling apart." -Giattina, San Francisco Bay Guardian

"In the play I portray a disgusting, selfish, provincial fellow who for twenty years has been reading works on art but understanding nothing about the subject-a man who brings despondency and gloom to all those near him, who is not accessible to laughter and music-and who, despite all this, is undoubtedly happy." Anton Chekhov

"Joe Pintauro's BESIDE HERSELF…is a real uplifter…. Mary Candee is a woman whose life has not turned out the way she imagined…. Pintauro's heroine is, in short, a representation of Unfulfilled Womanhood, and if she…had been conceived by a less subtle, elegant-minded playwright, she would probably be a cliché…. …Three characters materialize-apparitions, obviously-and enter into lively conversation…you realize that these females are not creations of the heroine's imagination, but earlier versions of herself…. …its juxtaposition of the romantic and the banal…makes Pintauro's play alternately lovely and piquant…. Instead of watching a character relive past events (Willy Loman style), we see characters from the past taking an unnatural interest in what is going on in the present. Or else we're watching her younger selves watch the heroine go through the motions of her life. It's funny and poignant, and one of the best uses I've seen of the device of representing the changing of the divided self by more than one actor. Like the ghosts in…OUR TOWN, each of the apparitions knows only her part of what has happened in the world and in the heroine's life. (The little girl doesn't know that the Second World War is over; the young girl doesn't know whom the heroine wound up marrying; the woman in violet doesn't know that the heroine's husband died.) The fact that each can understand only what she could be expected to furnishes occasions for drama and passion. There's a generosity toward actors in the way Pintauro has given each of the apparitions a thematic and psychological function…." Mimi Kramer, The New Yorker

"The words `I was there', intoned repeatedly by the characters in HIT THE WALL, give Ike Holter's play about the 1969 Stonewall riots the self-consecrated holiness of solemn testimony. But the crucial refrain is: `The reports of what happened next are not exactly clear'. Given the extent to which urban legend and documented research of the events have blurred together over the decades, any dramatic consideration of Stonewall must embrace the mythology. So Mr Holter's impassioned evocation of the sparks that ignited the gay rights movement…are strongest when stylized interpretation eclipses conventional realism… Watching the characters strut through a liberating dance that erupts into chaos and violence when police lights pierce the smoky haze gives the sense of being caught up in that momentous clash… Among the most fully realized figures are Carson, a black drag queen as fearful as he is imperious; Peg, a `stone butch' lesbian ostracized by her family; and the `Snap Queen Team' of Tano and Mika, throwing shade at passers-by from their perch on a Christopher Street stoop. Fierce and funny, the verbal and attitudinal exchanges swapped by this duo with the formidable Carson owe more to slam poetry and 1980s Harlem voguing than to authentic period behavior. The play is deeply affecting at times, notably when Carson is bitterly rebuked during a rare foray outside in daylight to pay his respects at the funeral of Judy Garland. Or when Peg's uptight sister insensitively suggests how much better off she would be if she could just `hold it in'. …[We] feel the unendurable pain of self-denial. …What's perhaps more significant is that Mr Holter is working in a vernacular that speaks sincerely and directly to today's gay youth. His freewheeling play invites them to honor the earlier generation that broke the chains of marginalization and invisibility." David Rooney, The New York Times

"With the craft and depth of a fine novelist, Mr Belber creates a mosaic of pointed incidents imparting vital information. Beautifully dramatized is the subtext of enduring the damage by a troubled family background, as evidenced by Joan's circuitous life journey with its bouts of self-sabotage, irrational decisions, selfishness and redemptive self-awareness. The form of the memory play is taken to the zenith by JOAN." Theatre Scene "With bold ambition to do just that, to tell the story of one woman's life with honesty and integrity, playwright Stephen Belber's JOAN offers a kaleidoscopic look at its fictional, titular character through a lens of sweeping longitude that slowly creates an absorbing and dramatically effective portrait. The humanity painted by Mr Belber's play is moving precisely because of its simplicity and ordinariness. Every person has a story. Joan's is worth seeing." Stage Left "In many ways, Joan has led a normal existence: daughter and mother, lover and wife, sister and friend, artist and teacher. She has had affairs and heartaches, hopes and frustrations. What's less ordinary is how the playwright Stephen Belber tells her story: in nonchronological vignettes that jump around various points in her life. …JOAN is a fractured portrait that holds together." Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New Yorker

"THE SHADOW is a play about society, a political play. It is not so much a political parody as a poetic and philosophical work of art. It is a play about Man in Society, but also about Good and Evil, Love and Death. Like all of Shvarts' plays it is funny, but it is also eerie. The Shadow is a play about any country under the yoke of a powerful dictatorship which works its will through a dehumanized bureaucracy." Avril Pyman "The twofold nature of the satire in THE SHADOW is clear. Corruption in the social order parallels and reflects corruption in the governmental order and both fear anything or anyone that threatens reform, for implicit in reform is the end of privilege. Where such societal and governmental corruption is prevalent, suggests Shvarts, the mere hint of reform is enough to galvanize the perpetrators of corruption into a massive campaign not just to block reform but to eliminate it at its source." Harold B Segel "THE SHADOW does not offer a version of easy, magical, utopian transformation of social reality. Shvarts leaves the satiric paradigms unsubverted, untransformed at the end of the play. The story of the hero's attainment of magical power contradicts, but does not undermine, various opposed stories about evil forces that continue to reign in society and in the hearts of individual people." Duffield White

"…Duke was the man. The play [is] essentially a not-so-thinly-disguised homage to his amazingly rich and humble life, from early Olympic beginnings to an acting career in Hollywood, to being sheriff of Honolulu, to returning home and basking in the role of Hawaii's cultural ambassador. …`Here was a man who was as important to the people of Hawaii as Michael Jordan was to Chicagoans.' But we're not talking some dusty history lecture… Who could resist getting sucked into such a timeless fable? Duke's statue in Waikiki comes to life when it's discovered that Hawaii's surf has been missing for two weeks; the ocean's `like glass', the groms say. This is no average flat spell, he realizes as the ultra evil Mr Double Bogey has plans to turn the entire Hawaiian Island chain into the world's biggest golf course and convention center. Bogey's holding the surf hostage and won't give it back until Duke presents him with all Hawaii's land deeds. So-in between historically informative monologues detailing Duke's life-the good guys go looking for the surf, literally…" Marcus Sanders, Surf News

"It starts off easy, sweet and very funny. Norma is a professional cuddler. Now I have heard of professional cuddlers but to my knowledge I have never met one nor have I ever understood the what, why and wherefore of their `profession'. Nevertheless there she is engaging in her cuddling work. Also just to get things off to a weird and wonderful start there we see on stage Dog, not just a dog but the Dog who as it turns out is a human man barking and otherwise behaving like one would expect of a dog. Seems the dog got lost from its owners and found its way into the care of Norma. But Norma wants very much to return the dog to its real owners and to that end visits the local coffee shop and posts a photo of the dog directing the owner where to find her and the dog. Yes, yes I know this is all rather strange but hang in there, it gets even better. At the coffee shop she is met by a barista, a fellow by the name of Norm. Seems Norm is a huge fan of the late great Whitney Houston. In fact Norm routinely takes video of himself dancing in a very flamboyant manner to Houston music. At first their encounter is rather stressed. But slowly Norm and Norma begin to develop a very much unexpected relationship. As the story unfolds what becomes obvious is that both Norm and Norma have been long suffering from a failed relationship, shattered love and ultimately deep loneliness. This is when the story begins to turn. What starts as wild, outlandish and funny morphs into something far deeper. But I will not spoil the story for you. …It is one of those all too rare theatrical presentations that reaches beyond the easy and superficial and probes both heart and mind. For this I also salute playwright Dominic Finocchiaro. Want to see something remarkably unique and richly entertaining? …Just what you are looking for." Ron Irwin, Los Angeles Post-Examiner "Wow! …The kind of play you'll want to tell all your romcom-loving friends (and just about anyone else in search of smart, funny, heartstrings-tugging, feel-good new theater) not to miss." Steven Stanley, Stage Scene LA "Recommended… Finocchiaro is a fine comic talent." Gray Palmer, Stage Raw