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Prowling the Abyss
direction & dramaturgy
by Elizabeth Baron
"I loved it! What a joy to spend time with these characters, these voices, these ruminations, these passions and curiosities. Most of all, what a joy to watch Karen's immense talents on display, shifting between these different personae and embodying these disparate, beautiful, grotesque, absurd, harrowing spirits. [...] I appreciated them all as elliptical, thoughtful meditations on conflicting attitudes of power."
-Joshua Fesi: writer, creator, producer, Brooklyn, NY
"I saw it as an invocation."
-Tamar, Tucson, AZ
"I thought about the categories we are put into as women and actors. [...] It made me think about de Beauvoir’s opening statement about no one being born a woman, but becoming one from learning her role."
-Alyssa K. Simon: actress, NYC
“Seeing you go so far into these parts and take space and play in them, made me think that, if she can do THAT, then surely the parts of myself that I hide or think are too much…they can take up space, too.
I was hungry in my soul for that show."
-Acious, Tucson, AZ
Guardian Angel Church, NYC
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center Rough Draft Festival
Theater Bay Area CA$H grant, LMCC creative engagement grant, Walter E Dakin Fellowship, Sewanee Conference,
JM Kaplan Writing Grant
“Unblinking Eye immediately grabbed me with its human story anchored in a larger and very timely conversation about the ethics of war. Iris, the protagonist, feels like a strikingly original combination of the archetypal and the particular, navigating an American landscape presented in a way that I have not seen before. Justin skillfully uses precise and emotionally resonant language to build the characters and the world of the play. The silences are deeply effective. The synthesis of colloquial and poetic language is profound.”
— Naomi Iizuka, playwright
Sisters of Rapture
"I think performance may actually say something important about identity [ ... ]. In the audience, you said I was your anchor. I was so touched. You made me very aware of my role in the performance. I could not just sit back and be passive. I had to be active.
...
I imagined I was like a stone in a river, and the words were rushing over me. I could catch some, but not all. And I thought, oh, this is the nature of performance. If you try to hold onto it, it slips away."
-Jill Falzoi: dancer, theatre artist, NYC
"Lots and lots of images, words, moments emerging all night long.
[...] such a gorgeous imaginative use of your body. We could watch you and be mesmerized. Simone as always, finding a way with such simplicity and yet force of specific, focus.
The narrative is for each of us to gather all our parts and say who we each are.
Everyone, everything, every kind of desire and love.
-Meg Gibson: actress
EDNA BARRÓN AND KAREN ANNE LIGHT IN “ALICE DOWN THE RWONG WRABBIT WHOLE” ARE AS FRESH AND TANGY AS PINEAPPLE CATFISH SOUP
"[Karen & Edna] re-pair the zeitgeist and one’s faith in theater as they negotiate the scrambled vignettes, mangled dialogues, and skittish skits of Alice Down The Rwong Wrabbit Whole, presented at The Emerald Tablet. This is not for the faint of heart or the linear-dependent; they will lose you in the dust with the split-second timing of their controlled hysteria."
Steven Gray, THEATRESTORM
"Six women stand perfectly still, facing one another. And then they begin to move, as if one organism, flexing and contracting and then breaking apart, shattering themselves across the stage. One actor snaps her fingers. The others join in, one by one. They stomp their feet as they march inward on each other, their hissing and moaning growing louder. A voice rises above them, providing a line of story, and then they’re quiet again. Their gestures become more fluid, and they begin to whistle, which resembles a morning birdsong."
Lauren LaRocca, Santa Fe New Mexican
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