Press
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“ADDRESSLESS keeps us invested in the characters' narratives by calling us in to co-create the story with them, not for them. Socio-politically aware, technically smooth and creatively sound, ADDRESSLESS succeeds as an interactive moving experience about the quest for a place to stay, to be, to thrive.” - Derek McCracken, Broadway World
“While Addressless is an interactive, real life strategy and theatrical game, it is also more than a production and vehicle for entertainment. It is a soft and intimate learning experience that exposes the audience to the reality of housing insecurity through this unique ‘what would you do?’ style of theater.”- Sandi Durell, Theater Pizzazz
“This global premiere from Rattlestick Playwrights Theater doesn't gamify the lives of "addressless" people at the expense of their dignity; rather, it builds emotional and ethical momentum as a multi-player audience-inclusive virtual experience that breaks the fourth wall through a creative combination of recorded performances, voiceovers, animation and real-time interactive discussion.” - Derek McCracken, Broadway World
Addressless
In the Southern Breeze
"Mansa Ra….invites you into limbo with him. You emerge from the show as if you’re leaving his mind. To leave the theater, you go down a long stairwell, but it feels like rising again into life.” - Helen Shaw, Vulture
"And (Mansa) Ra, like this show’s excellent cast of five, proves adept at lightning-quick switches between the crushing and the comical.” - Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times
“Under Christopher D Betts’ direction, the production is smooth, with highlights including Emma Deane’s dramatic lighting, and some fine performances, especially Travis Raeburn, who seemed to get a big laugh at every line, and Allan K. Washington.” - Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater
“In the Southern Breeze is only slightly longer than a group-therapy session, and in many ways it functions like one, with its characters modeling connection and catharsis” - Regina Robbins, TimeOut
“The most delightful thing about NI MI MADRE is hearing the unvarnished voice of one working-class immigrant infiltrate the American theater, dominated as it is by bourgeois manners and attitudes"
-- Zachary Stewart, TheaterMania
New York Times Critics Pick
Ni Mi Madre
“NI MI MADRE is an aching heart wrapped in laughter and a long white dress - an offering of understanding and forgiveness, presented on the altar of bruised inheritance” - Laura Collins Hughes, New York Times
“His perfect timing is matched by a performance that seductively straddles the line between characterization and affectation––you never lose sight of the fact that it is Soria onstage, but that’s the point.” - Juan A. Ramirez, Theaterly
“What marks this play as extraordinary in these knee-jerk antagonistic times is its ease with emotional contradiction and discomfort, its willingness to let filial affection persist despite a cleareyed acknowledgment of parental damage done.” - Laura Collins Hughes, New York Times
“Thirteen years of rewriting and rehearsing have left him with a script that shines like lacquer, and an impersonation that's kinetically exquisite." - Helen Shaw, Vulture
The Siblings Play
“The most thrilling family drama I’ve seen this season... I regularly gasped and involuntarily brought my palm to my cheek (a dangerous impulse these days). But I couldn’t help it: The Siblings Play consistently kept me on the edge of my seat.” - Zachary Stewart, Theatermania
“This is a bold, impressive playwriting debut by Ren Dara Santiago, who shows a fine ear for the love-hate rhythms of a pressured family and a confident hand in shaping drama that skirts the edge of tragedy… The acting is gritty and passionate but leavened by humor, and Santiago’s earthly, yearning language jumps off the screen. With a Vimeo code, you can go home again.” - David Cote, Observer
“After a thousand plays about the pressures of bourgeois privilege, here at last would be a barnstorming play about living close to the knuckle, relying on networks of concerned neighbors, dodging debt, and finding ways — even seemingly destructive ways — to be resilient. The Siblings Play might have offered up a critique we could use, but it might also have been a model to follow in a time of total social disrepair.”- Helen Shaw Vulture
Cal in Camo
Time Out New York Critics Pick
“William Francis Hoffman’s powerful, too-brief Cal in Camo is ruthlessly grown-up” -Time Out New York
“The play is best in its moments of quiet strain, in naturalistic dialogue that suggests how good will goes awry when we are trying our hardest to bond.” - The New York Times
Draw the Circle
“Draw the Circle does not sugarcoat [Deen’s] despair or incidents of violence, yet it rather amazingly reaches back to retrieve people who easily could have been cut out for life. The wrathful moment confronting us with the ongoing violence against trans people does not define the tone of this personable, entirely approachable show. Inarguably, though, it's that flicker of wrath that gives the piece its purpose.” - The Washington Post
“The story of personal anguish and eventual self-realization Deen tells in Draw the Circle would have made for a moving experience as a memoir, to be sure. But by telling his story through the perspectives of those around him, he achieves that high artistic aim of locating broader universal import in a deeply specific tale.” - Theatermania
