Is edward Snowden single?
“By far one of the most exhilarating new plays I’ve seen in the last few years… A marathon of witticisms and fresh vivacity.
Playing a dozen or so characters seamlessly, Rebecca S'manga Frank and Elise Kibler are a revelation in heartbreak and realism…
Cortesi has a gift of elucidating the cacophony of formative experiences that, when piled together, weave the narrative you tell yourself— and others— about your identity for possibly the rest of your life.”
“A return to what Off-Off was originally for: clever writing, produced on a shoestring, full of the sheer delight of doing things with words.
Exquisitely performed…. Cortesi is very good at mayhem.
A gorgeously tart meditation on questions such as Should you let a cute boy demagnetize your ethical compass? The answer makes your needle spin.”
-Helen Shaw, New York Magazine
“A complex, satisfying theatrical experience… absolutely ingenious… full of crackling intercut dialogue… exquisitely zany…
It’s a plate-spinning trick which never breaks a saucer.”
“With the return of live theater, many artists have found themselves wondering how they can change the system they work in to make it more sustainable. Enter Kate Cortesi, Brenda Withers and Emily Zemba, the writers behind the 2021 edition of the Pool, a pop-up theater company for which playwrights self-produce their shows.”
-”Doing It Their Way,” The New York Times
love
"Cortesi’s script is wonderfully sharp, funny and poignant in all the right places. The non-linear structure fills in the story fascinatingly, not so much unveiling shocking twists as deepening what we already know and making it more complex. There’s a lot of resonant truth-telling."
—Sam Hurwitt, Marin Independent Journal
“With the sweep of the #MeToo movement… playwright Kate Cortesi offers a provocative and stimulating world premiere play, Love, which humanizes the parties involved and explores the complexities of relationships that many depictions often simplify to the point of distortion. Cortesi constantly confronts the audience with the complexities of life. Especially, she challenges us to abandon the notion that women who engage in sexual relationships in the workplace must be victims or sluts, without a full range of agency. The questioning she provokes seems almost endless, and she does it in a riveting and entertaining manner. Love is much more than its four-letter title would suggest.”
-Victor Cordell, Berkshire Fine Arts Review
“I count myself fortunate to have been among the lucky few to see [Love]. I was absolutely compelled as I watched Kate Cortesi’s brand new play unfold. The script is sharp, witty and relatable…. asking us to pull out our moral compasses…. Love is an important and provocative part of the conversation.”
—Hannah Yurke, Ronnie’s Awesome List
“Love is extraordinary. Clea Alsip does a fine job as the ingenue Penelope and R. Ward Duffy is strong and confident as her boss Otis. Their conversation fills the empty space with tension. They are fencing with one another, parrying and thrusting as the audience perches, watching for the next move.”
—Cari Lynn Pace, Aisle Seat Review
“A clever, well-acted examination of sexual abuse from the perspective of abuser and victim that challenges the black and white image of right and wrong by adding in heavy shades of grey….Clea Alsip shines in the role many women face when confronted with the reality of situations where sex and power merge.”
—Steven Murray, Broadway World
IS EDWARD SNOWDEN SINGLE? - VIRTUAL WORLD PREMIERE @ the jungle theater, Minneapolis
“Kate Cortesi’s raucous comedy…has something powerful to say about the extent to which all of us sometimes put on an act.”
“One of the best uses of this new medium that I've seen…
“Combining illustrations, animation, and fantastically versatile performances by two actors in front of green screens, they tell this story of two best friends trying to navigate life, love, work, and the truth in a truly fresh and innovative 2020 kind of way.”
“This show is billed as a comedy… but it has much more depth to it than I expected. By the end, it was more of a drama, posing many moral questions and bringing up difficult topics of self-esteem, relationships, loyalty, and self-preservation.
This incredible production… magically comes together in seamless and innovative ways.”
-Play Off The Page, 5 Star Review
And here’s a bit on how the Jungle Theater came to produce the virtual world premiere with director Christina Baldwin.
A patron the arts - “Il mecenate”- Italian premiere & Cherry Lane Theatre, NYC
“calls to mind fragments of Hopper, ‘Breaking Bad,’ Susan Sontag, Hemingway, and Noam Chomsky, as it veers through topics that litter American life, from guns to junk food to obesity.”
Playwright Kate Cortesi has constructed a spiky psychological thriller, jagged in form and content, and it runs beautifully. Short scenes begin in the middle and end before anything like resolution: all this deferred satisfaction just drives the machine forward. Until the final minutes it’s a simple two-hander, except nothing is simple. A middle-aging art teacher, washed-up artist and coke addict, has fled his family. In a trailer park he’s feeding his habit without outside distraction, until his new dealer, an ex-student, smells his chance at redemption if he can only connect with his former teacher’s onetime genius. So he proposes becoming his new client’s art patron. Deal! Cortesi is very smart about the human (male) heart, unafraid to lead her audience through its darker passages. The actors playing both artist & dealer inhabit their roles with idiomatic passion. And a masterful final scene explodes the closed world of the trailer, introduces a 3rd character and reframes all we thought we’d seen.
INTERVIEWS
Fellow Pool Playwrights Brenda Withers and Emily Zemba and I chat here with StageBuddy and here with Hollywood Soapbox about putting on plays together and why doing it live is better than anything.
A conversation with the brilliant homies Ren Dara Santiago and Morgan Gould in the Brooklyn Rail about our plays being cancelled, and other things. Happy things! Like, why actors love playing high so much.
The Interview Project, Playwrights Horizons - Playwright Will Arbery asks me soulful questions about being an artist in quarantine, like “Who or what is beautiful to you right now?”
3Views magazine honored Love’s untimely closing by interviewing me about it.
Playbill Interview, World Premiere of Love. I loved talking about the history of my theatrical imagination with MTC’s Artistic Producer Trevor Floyd.
Charming playwright/theater blogger Adam Szymkowicz interviews me about my Princess Grace Award-winning play and if my childhood contained evidence that I’d become a playwright.