Reviews! I Have Reviews!

Y’all, check this shit out! If this is not the weirdest, coolest thing to happen to me, I just don’t know what the fuck is. I have reviews.

Only two, but two is two more reviews of my play than I had just last week, so there’s that.

Shall we peruse them together?

First:

Here Becca A. Lewis pulls her tennessee accent out of mothballs to become a fading Country-Music star trying to make herself once more into the Image her public will expect when she steps on the Grand Ol’ Opry stage. The idea of being trapped in an image less and less true to your true self comes alive because Kathy Wittman enters as a newswoman bent on doing an intimate portrait of the backstage life of a famous performer. [Aunt B.’s] play ends letting the audience decide whether a terrified star can have the guts to tell the world who she really is.

Second:

In the first play, Honey, I’m So Lonesome I Don’t Know What to Do, by [Aunt B.], the set represents the back-stage precincts of a run-down country and western music venue. Lucetta Flood (Becca A. Lewis) entertains a lesbian journalist (Kathy Wittman), and wrestles with her scathing inner doubts as she weighs a successful music career against the freedom, and the consequences, of telling the truth about herself. The dialogue, full of broken hearts and love gone wrong and girlfriends who chose church friends over life-long love, fits into the country-music theme nicely, and packs a punch as stiff as a belt of the Jack Daniels the women put away as their passions simmer.

[…]

Some of these pieces are complete little sketches, and some seem like promising first acts for larger works; as a result, the best, most fully realized plays tend to feel unfinished (October), while the self-contained pieces have a superficial feel, sometimes feeling obvious (McGillicuddy) and sometimes charged with a sketch-show energy that makes them so funny and witty that you accept them as charming shots of theatrical imagination, like amuse-bouches of the stage (The Sanzibel Putt-Putt Rally). Honey I’m, So Lonesome I Don’t Know What to Do and Paris walk a fine line between the two extremes…

Well, hmm. I’m not sure what two extremes my play is walking a fine line between, but I’m going to take that as a compliment anyway.

And can I just say that I’m dying to see it now, more than ever? It’s really weird to see how other folks have interpreted what I wrote. I mean, in my mind, Lucetta is an up-and-coming country music star not a fading one. And clearly, even if the back stage of the Grand Ole Opry is not The Ritz, how can one see it as a “run-down country and western music venue”? I don’t know.

It’ll be cool to see.

It’s so damn cool to have folks take my writing seriously as art. Cool and weird and wonderful. I have total heebie-jeebies all over.

Folks, I know some of you are out east. If you’re interested, here’s the skinny:

Queer Soup Theater presents:
lost & found: the anniversary series
June 28 – July 21st, Thurs – Sat 8 PM, Sun 7/8 & 7/15 4 PM
Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
949 Commonwealth Ave, Boston

Hurricane Katrina. A proposal. Sobriety. Birthdays. 9/11. Mini-Golf. Kooky Queer Theater. Anniversaries. As we celebrate 5 years together, we asked our favorite playwrights and artists to bring an anniversary to life. And like any milestone worth celebrating, there’s laughter, tears and a six-foot silver dog-walking alien.

with: Becca A. Lewis, Cheryl Singleton, Kathy Wittman, Mal Malme, Paul Dixon
Directed by: Renee C. Farster

Plays:
“Honey, I’m so Lonesome I Don’t Know What to Do” by [Aunt B.]
“October” by Ginger Lazarus
“Paris” by Lyralen Kaye
“gutting” by Mal Malme
“The Sanizibel Putt-Putt Rally” by Jess Martin
“Magillicutti” by Renee C. Farster
“Queer Soup: The True Homogenized Story” a film by Kathy Wittman

Special dates:
7/8 ASL; 7/12 benefit for the Center for New Words; 6/28, 7/8, & 7/15: Pay-What-You-Can

How much? $22, $15 Students/Seniors
Tix: 1-866-811-4111 or at http://www.queersoup.net

See that? 7/8 “Pay What You Can” I’ll be there on 7/8. Just saying. I’ll be the girl shreaking with delight.