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WE ARE NOT THESE HANDS
"The gap between rich and poor
yawns so wide it aches in Sheila
Callaghan's 'We Are Not These
Hands,' but much of the ache is
from laughter... 'Hands' is a comically engaging, subversively penetrating look
at the human cost of unbridled capitalism on both sides of the
river... The anger of the
play's social vision is partly concealed by its copious humor,
emerging more forcefully after it's over... 'Hands' bristles with bright, comic originality, particularly in
depicting the limitations of its people." -San Francisco Chronicle
"Bold and engaging, "We Are Not These Hands" is as fun as it
is frightening... rich in detail and full of humor and pathos." -Oakland Tribune
"Fascinating material by this intriguing New York playwright." -Backstage
"Quirkily compelling... [Callaghan's] attacking
much larger ideas about economics, politics, the
discrepancy between global haves and have-nots, and
the exoticization of the other. And once again she
manages to get her jabs in while offering up weirdly
engaging characters... Whimsical and daring... subversively smart." -East Bay Express
"Callaghan's characters reflect a set of tensions,
affinities, and contradictions as they negotiate love and survival
that speak fluently of their mutual alienation from a half-illusory
world of winners... a satisfying mix of the satirical, madcap, and bizarre...
a nicely original creation, broadly absurd yet also shaded by a
deep ambivalence." -San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Compelling... The
'have/have-not' dilemma that most U.S.
tourists are exposed to is not easily solved, and
Callaghan is engaging and not overbearing in dramatizing this
divide." -San Francisco Weekly
"A sense of wonder, both childlike and eccentric..."
-Berkeley Daily Planet
"Swaggering eccentricity... Callaghan takes a lavish mud bath in broken
language...ripe apocalyptic slang; at its best, it's racy and unrefined,
the kind of stuff you might imagine kids in the back alleys of a
decaying world might sling around." -The Washington Post
"Like many young playwrights, Callaghan is interested in language, and
in particular words of loss and powerlessness. Moth and Belly speak in a
sort of invented Clockwork Orangish type dialect that allows them to
avoid nuance and specificity...intriguing and provocative."
-DC Theatre Reviews
"We Are Not These Hands wrestles with some big and potentially
disturbing ideas...bracingly honest." -Washington City Paper
"Willfully turning convention upside down... compelling." -Read Express
"Masterful handiwork... touching..." -Daily Colonial
"An abundance of interesting ideas and innovative twists... moments of
real power, as well as passages of dialogue as stunning as they are
hilarious... Callaghan is a very talented writer, full of anger as well
as an obvious desire to encompass the fractured realities of a
media-saturated, postindustrial world economy and its ramifications for
those most ignored and forgotten by it. She's got the chops to do it,
too." -Seattle Weekly
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DEAD CITY
"Wonderful... Sheila Callaghan's pleasingly witty and theatrical new drama that
is a love letter to New York masquerading as hate mail... [Callaghan]
writes with a world-weary tone and has a poet's gift for economical description. The entire dead city
comes alive..."
-New York TImes
"DEAD CITY, Sheila Callaghan's riff on James Joyce's ULYSSES is stylish, lyrical,
fascinating, occasionally irritating, and eminently worthwhile...
the kind of work that is thoroughly invigorating."
-Backstage
"Sheila
Callaghan surprises with an understandably
sprawling but always interesting narrative... It's an adventurous riff on [ULYSSES] with an especially well-rounded
and human character at play's center... at once realistic and fanciful."
-Variety
"[DEAD CITY] dissects the line between brilliance and just plain ol' crazy, blurring it even further... impressive."
-Village Voice
"Gutsy... [Callaghan's] prosaic voiceovers have it right... we glimpse how Joyce's wanderer once persueded
readers that the internal landscape is the one worth exploring." -TimeOut NY (Critic's
Pick)
"While [ULYSSES] provides the inspiration for this wonderful work,
the play stands on its own as a detailed and moving
portrait of contemporary life in New York City."
-Theatremania.com
"Joyce would have
gone to town with the bizarre sounds and phrases from our internetsoaked,
fast-food-stuffed, fifteen-minutes-of-fame world, as the many
remarkable scenes in this play show it's possible to do. There are some
storyline parallels with Ulysses, but more important in the inspiration
department is the way Callaghan picks up on and makes effective new use
of the combination of narrative sincerity and silliness, wonder and
cynicism, panorama and detail, that put ULYSSES in a class of its own. DEAD CITY
is very different, of course, but the shared underlying engagement
with language and the flow of modern life makes it a similarly vibrant and
frequently arresting creation."
-Gothamist
"Well-written, original plays are not a regular part of New York's
theatrical landscape. It's a delightful surprise when one appears, even if
it's a revision of an already published work. Yet it's dismissive to think of
DEAD CITY as just another link in a historical chain. Sheila Callaghan's
play is a unique and completely contemporary bit of magic." -Offoff Online
"Callaghan's
script provides a fresh and inventive variation on the classic
theme of alienation in the big city. Her female characters have a
vibrant, tragicomic presence. A compelling ride..."
-Showbusiness Weekly
"The play assumes on its own, enchanting logic... as the locations change and the
characters flit around town, we arrive at [the characters']
central struggle: being understood in a world in which we are often not heard, or choose
not to say what is on our minds. In the end, how they move beyond this emotional stasis
will move you, too."
-Downtown Express
"A thrilling theatrical trip...awe-inspiring."
-Flavorpill
"DEAD CITY valiantly succeeds in capturing the random swirl of
Joyce's onerous urban landscape, illustrating how a single day of navigating its perils
can be an adventure that reinvigorates the soul...fascinatingly potent."
-Gay City News
"Ambitious... [Callaghan] has a
fondness for heightened, poetic language..."
-nytheatre.com
"For a hundred
minutes, the city becomes like an oyster filled with infinite pearls... Callaghan has created a fluid,
lyrical world that riffs on reality as if it were jazz."
-New Theatre Corps
"Callaghan is not a playwright to dismiss... [she] has real insight and
a grasp on modernity - with all its obsessions and melancholiness - that few playwrights harness with such alacrity."
-Chicago Tribune
"Swifter and sexier than Joyce..."
-Chicagoist (Top 6 of 2006)
"Weirdly funny and haunting... a jagged stage poem."
-Time Out Chicago
"Fleet, funny and smart."
-Center Stage Chicago
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CRUMBLE (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake)
"This whimsically eloquent view of a widow, her daughter and their anthropomorphic apartment, all bereft and bonkers,
is a potent example of postmodern narrative invention...
Ionesco never blended absurdity, terror and sentiment more strikingly... [a] sweetly audacious parable...
Callaghan's breakthrough work." -Los
Angeles Times (Critic's Pick)
"[A] gothic comedy which balances wit and kitsch with scars and wounds, while wielding a preteen's sense of
morbidity and drama to strike some chilling blows." -LA Weekly (Recommended)
"Soon-to-be classic... whatever you do, don't miss it... amazing..." -Entertainment Today
"Here's Sheila Callaghan at her best in this delightfully warped one-act... [an] important and unstoppable new writer." -Reviewplays
"Sheila Callaghan's breakout play... very twisted, very funny..." -LA Downtown News (from the 'Don't Miss List')
"An unexpected jolt of good theater... Without resorting to sap, [Callaghan] conjures real emotional pathos...
a dark, screwed-up version of Judy Blume." -New City Chicago (Tip of the Week, Top 5 of '05)
"Moments of nail-biting anguish... weirdly satisfying...
Callaghan's writing is studded with startling descriptive passages." -Chicago Tribune (Top 10 "fringe" shows of '05)
"[Callaghan] understands that theater is the ideal place in which to explore nonrealistic notions...
original... intriguing... as off-kilter as the playwright's imagination." -Chicago Sun Times (Recommended)
"Feverishly ambitious... undeniable heart..." -TimeOut Chicago
"Heightened language and acid humor.... if of the 'I must laugh or I shall never stop screaming' variety..." -East Bay Express
"An unflinching look at the power of grief... rooted, real and recognizable in its depiction of adolescent angst and awakening." -Inside Bay Area
"This is an amazing script, one I want to get my hands on and read again and again. It's touching, bittersweet,
brutally honest at times, and freakishly surreal at others... This is not a fluffy show, nor is it depressing.
It is thought provoking." -East Bay Voice
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CRAWL, FADE TO WHITE
"A flair for the peculiar distinguishes playwright Sheila Callaghan...
[she finds] raw emotion under the deadpan uproar... 'Crawl' has arresting elegance." -Los
Angeles Times (Recommended)
"Sheila Callaghan takes us through the looking glass into a play with surreal plot developments...
a strange-but-touching study of estrangement, loneliness and reconciliation." -LA Weekly (Recommended)
"Callaghan's dialogue is sharp and bizarrely incisive, surely heralding another step in the evolution of a great contemporary playwright." -Entertainment Today
"The brilliance of Sheila Callaghan's play and a lesson to every aspiring writer is that she takes a mother-daughter conflict,
dissects it, probes every aspect with jewel-like precision, incorporates flashbacks, contrasts it with frightened surreal neighbors -- then presents
the results in 90 taut minutes structured with the lyric prose of a poem. This densely layered play raises as many questions as it
answers but it's a quirky delight. " -CurtainUp
"Exceptional... a remarkable achievement that makes me realize how fortunate we all are to be beneficiaries of the haunted souls of
tortured artists in general--and possibly Callaghan in particular..." -Reviewplays
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KATE CRACKERNUTS
"There's a wild terrain of words in this playwright's head... fantastical... a primal psychological crucible..." -The Village Voice
"Callaghan's wordplay is evocative and apt..." -TimeOut NY
"An off-beat adaptation... eclectic but well-constructed, inventive... energetic, fun, and funny!" -Offoffonline
"Strange, dense, brilliant wordplay...
part poetry slam, part rave, part dog-eared storybook theater, and all
edgy, infectious, ultra-theatrical entertainment. Kate Crackernuts is an
adult fairy tale that, like its tough but vulnerable heroine, follows a
warped dream logic while keeping its sharp-tongued wits about it." -Los
Angeles Times (Critic's Pick)
"A new mythology for the 21st
century... it's a great ride." -Backstage West (Critic's Pick)
"A pulsing dreamscape where fairy tale meets rave...
Breathtaking, ingenious innovation." -The Trojan Horse
"Watching it is rather like viewing a Pablo Picasso exhibit - full of
color, angles, movement, musicians - and if you must ask what this
actually means, you've missed the show." -The Herald Times
"Wild, quirky, funny tale of quest and conquest... Kate Crackernuts is
funny, it's also a little risque, and a bit touching." -WFIU Indiana
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SCAB
"SCAB... is a textbook example of promising work,
written with a yen for interesting language and liberally salted with
well-observed details of the lives of newly minted adults... the play
shines." -The New York Times
"SCAB is an offbeat, comedic
exploration of friendship, love, pain and healing ...the humor comes out
naturally in the interaction between the contrasting roommates as well
as in the outrageous portrayal of academic snobbery." -Backstage
"... Darkly funny forays into the surreal... Callaghan shows
talent in the inventive fantasy sequences... A stylish production " -The
Village Voice
"Sheila Callaghan crafts sparkling dialogue for
two goofy graduate students in LA... romantic entanglements are added
with wit, and sensitivity. A whip-smart play." -TimeOut NY (Critic's
Pick)
"Rarely does a play give such an impression that the
characters were alive long before I began watching them and continued
with their lives after I went home... The plot is unusual without being
implausible, the dialogue is intelligent while still sounding natural...
I would watch this play again without hesitation." -offoffoff.com
"A provocative playwright who's just beginning to garner a
national following, Callaghan creates work that's realistic and
unpredictable, dark and funny, reassuring and disturbing." -Philadelphia
Weekly
"...it's opposites-attract meets love-triangle, though Callaghan spices it up by
bringing into this fray a heckling Virgin Mary statue, dark angels who
play tiny musical instruments and relatives who poop their pants. This magical David
Lynch-esque undertow sets "Scab" apart from others in this oeuvre.
Where some plays are quirky, "Scab" is
downright weird; where others give closure, Callaghan opens a wound." -Seattle Times
"...a fanciful comedy drama... novel and
absorbing." -The Seattle Post Intelligencer
"The piece is beautifully written by Callaghan, whose
ear for natural dialogue is superb... Intertwining painfully detailed
scenes of intimacy with extravagant dream sequences featuring a
foul-mouthed Virgin Mary and a pair of black-winged angels, Callaghan
shows us that the women's path to self-realization is alternately
difficult and joyous." -Theatremania
"Droll and ironic,
Callaghan writes about young people believably and with intelligence....
full of big laughs." -The Oakland Tribune
"Intricately woven....
a thoughtful tale, darkly comic, intensely personal and worthy."
-Contra Costa Times
"Wandering from the intimacy and hilarity of
girl talk to the incoherent blather of academia to the intensity and
illogic of Annie's neurosis, "Scab" is both an homage to the amusing
banter that overlies our superficial daily existence and a look into the
complicated tangle of emotions just beneath... wildly imaginative." -The
Daily Cal
"...disarmingly poignant..." -Chicago Reader
"... unsparing black comedy... poignant..." -LA Weekly
"Brilliantly and poetically rendered... [Callaghan's] playful sense of
language and her attunement to her characters are enthralling." -TimeOut Chicago
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THE HUNGER WALTZ
"The young playwright has come to attention in recent years as a distinctive talent with great
sensitivity to language..." -TimeOut NY
"It defies every expectation you may have for it...
[it's] every bit as fresh and invigorating as it is stylish and
perceptive.... Also a notable achievement is the fine balance of humor
and drama that Callaghan has woven into her script; the play is, by
turns, suspenseful, hilarious, and heartbreaking without ever missing a
beat or getting off the track of the story... Down to the smallest
details, this play is an impressive, exciting achievement. -Talking
Broadway
"A downright knockout." -Gay City News
"Playwright Sheila Callaghan tackles the time travel
with imagination..." -The New York Sun
"Sheila Callaghan has
woven together a wonderfully original piece of writing that takes both
cast and audience on an emotional rollercoaster...The Hunger Waltz is
one of those gemstones that makes mining the New York Fringe Festival so
exciting..." -Propaganda, The Daily Newspaper of the New York
International Fringe Festival
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AMERICAN JACK
"Sheila Callaghan is another writer who
plays with language, creating rhetorical sculptures with her repetitive
phrases. In American Jack, Callaghan explores the journey of a man whose
village in Greece was torched by occupying Germans in 1943, whose mother
was raped by soldiers, and whose father was killed... Callaghan's
language, however, is the key to the dramatic yet abstract tone of the
piece." -Backstage
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NEW SHOES
"Sheila Callaghan's New Shoes by far tops the
bill...Callaghan's play tells the potent tale of Richard whose average
life becomes infected with memories of a Vietnamese love affair...
Throughout all this, a fantasy collage, merging disparate elements of
his reality, unveils his secret yearnings." -LA Weekly
"The
highlight of the evening was New Shoes by Sheila Callaghan of New
York... As the act moves on, the audience is drawn deeper into the man's
mind, wondering what he is thinking and where the scenes will take us...
Talking to other audience members, some did not understand it at all,
and others found it captivating." -Los Angeles Local Art Works
"When it's over we feel overwhelmed by the compelling images which
dragged us into the inner haunts of the tortured man..." -Reviewplays.com
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STRANGE NEWS FROM ANOTHER PLANET
"Gutsy... sharp-witted... an artistically ambitious musical."
-TimeOut NY
"The story is intriguing and the dramaturgy is
clever, with themes that certainly resonate with today's audience. And
the bracketing device is original and fun... You will certainly feel
you've been entertained if you go. And I encourage you to attend. These
folks are onto something." -nytheatre.com
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TUMOR
"Playwright Sheila Callaghan explores the
territory [of pregnancy] in all sorts of inventive ways..." -nytheatre.com
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