Press
KARA & EMMA & BARBARA & MIRANDA
"...the tale it tells of haves and have-nots across many vectors—gender, class, age—is so compelling and tenderly told. This is dramatic portraiture of the highest order."
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins | Yale Drama Series Prize
"A superb lo-fi slow burn... concealing a spectacularly precise structure."
"... a masterful journey of inner, intrusive thoughts that inadvertently lead us to a feminist awakening."
"Ariel Stess is pulling off a good half-dozen theatrical stunts at once. And she is so impressively self-assured in her high-wire acrobatics that we focus only on the flips and dips, forgetting the gaping peril, above which the wily tricks are being performed. "
"KARA & EMMA & BARBARA & MIRANDA left me giggling, sobbing, and desperately needing to call my mom."
Heartbreak
"The play demands we hush ourselves, that we tamp down our hunger for entertainment. In the quiet, we can enjoy Stess’s tiny throwaway jokes as though they were knee-slappers of the highest order."
"Stess’s sardonic humor lifts us with cyclical bouts of wordplay and miscommunication... The characters feel like they are trapped inside the English language, in a cage made of the alphabet."
"Her style is so vivid that the next time Ms. Stess puts together a party — or a meeting or whatever it is — I’ll want to be on the guest list."
"There was something so ruthless in its revelation of the thorn-sharp twists and mysteries of quotidian middle-class family life... I still have lines from that play stuck in my head."
I'm Pretty Fucked Up
"For the full 90 minutes, laughs are startled out of you, with the shock of transgression expertly orchestrated with stretches of sublime teenage idiocy. "