Become America by Eric Liu (pub. Penguin Random House) on THE FEVER
“I recently learned about a theater company called 600 Highwaymen, who stage performances in which the lines between audience and performer are smudged by invitations to see the eyes and bear the weight and the spirit of the people all around you. That’s what we all need now.”
“A Love Letter to Voyeuristic, Imaginative Acts: 600 Highwaymen’s A Thousand Ways (Part One: A Phone Call)” by Aly Perry (Howlround)
“This is what 600 Highwaymen is doing.
Opening portals, I mean.”
“Real Live Kids” by Helen Jaksch, Theater (Vol 46, Issue 3, Duke University Press)
“The audience is placed squarely between these real children and high metatheater. In this middle space we see our own lives, past and present, and glimpse the potential of our futures, too … Ultimately these productions prompt questions about the nature of theater and about life: What will I remember? What can I do know? What do I regret? What have I learned? Who’s in charge here? What am I doing? Does what I’m doing matter? What’s coming next?”
“The single most remarkable work of 2022” by Andy Horwitz, Culturebot on A Thousand Ways (Part Three): An Assembly
“One of the things that makes A Thousand Ways, Part 3: An Assembly so remarkable is that it not only encourages to see the world, and each other, in a new way, it creates the space for us to actually be in the world in a new way – to try it out, together … What makes A Thousand Ways, Part 3: An Assembly such a remarkable work is that it not only eschews didacticism, it almost entirely elides all the conventions of theater to achieve the theater’s ends. One can imagine multitudinous incarnations of this performance across multiple geographies, with numerous, diverse publics, each temporary micro-community invited to co-create, even if only for a brief moment in time, a collective story that becomes a shared history. After all is said and done, even if they never see each other again, everyone who was there will be able to look back and say “This was our story, this is what we did and this is who we became.””
Sebastian Caldron-Bentin on 600 HWM
“In playing with [the] most essential of theatrical conventions, one that hinges on the brief contract between the ones who watch and the ones who allow themselves to be watched, 600 HIGHWAYMEN deliver minimalist performances that blur the line between the beautiful and the banal.”
Theater of the Unimpressed by Jordan Tannahill (pub. Coach House Books) on THIS GREAT COUNTRY
“Theatre as a radical space of togetherness, where we become other people to unpack the complexities of being ourselves, of being human.”
Ira S. Murfin on THE FEVER
“This is experimental performance built to preserve and nurture a humane seed of communal cohesion for such time in the not-so-distant future when it will be most needed.”
Simon Dove on A THOUSAND WAYS (PART TWO)
“Central to Abby and Michael’s work has been the principle, and virtuosic skill, of nurturing people’s individual voices, and framing them theatrically in a way that is totally supportive yet retains the fascinating fragility and vulnerability that we see as their humanity.”
Culturebot on THIS GREAT COUNTRY
“The production was successful both as a work of art and as a demonstration of socially engaged art where local stakeholders were gathered to work collectively on a project that had meaning and resonance for the community at large.”