“Fake Friends bent a makeshift medium to its will, using technical invention and heaps of charisma…Foley and Breslin’s sheer brazenness won you over. They’re the TikTok era’s answer to Charles Ludlam”
—Michael Schulman, New Yorker
“…[A] rascally troupe…”
—Charles McNulty, the Los Angeles Times
“In the end, Fake Friends should be followed by anyone who’s serious (or angry) about theater; they’re smart and talented and playing the long game. Think of Elevator Repair Service in the 1990s, Radiohole in the 2000s, and Half Straddle in the last decade; design-forward devised troupes push the field forward and make us see drama differently”
–David Cote, The Observer
THIS AMERICAN WIFE (2021)
2021 NEW YORKER “BEST PERFORMANCES”
2021 LA TIMES THEATER HIGHLIGHTS
…a half-confessional, half-delusional treatise on gay men’s worship of TV’s “Real Housewives” franchise… And as their competing narratives become increasingly revealing and damaging, the show becomes a semi-improvised, high-concept dialectic on identity and “realness.”
—Juan A Ramírez, the New York Times
[This American Wife,] directed by Rory Pelsue and featuring dramaturgy by Cat Rodríguez and Ariel Sibert, represents an ingenious hybrid of stage and screen…Like Ludlam, Breslin, Foley and Powell understand gender as a series of ill-fitting costumes to be worn and shed with abandon. The performers are draped in pastels, but the chiffon dazzle goes deeper than drag. This is about making space for bodies that fall outside of conventional schemes and spirits that refuse to be relegated to invisible margins.
—Charles McNulty, the Los Angeles Times
Hari Nef, Artforum
Helen Shaw, Vulture
Maya Phillips, the New York Times (Review; Critic’s Notebook)
Rachel Syme, the New Yorker
Robert Rorke, Architectural Digest
Kyle Turner, Vanity Fair; Nylon; Medium
Juan Barquin, INTO
Nicole Serratore, Exeunt
Shanicka Anderson, The AV Club
CIRCLE JERK (2020)
2020 PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
2020 VULTURE BEST THEATER, “QUARRY” AWARD
Combining lessons from live television filming, advances in technology, and an extremely online sensibility, creators Patrick Foley and Michael Breslin made a show that could be a model for others.
—Helen Shaw, Vulture
[Circle Jerk’s] dynamic use of a real theater space mapped a live experience against a landscape of (literally) inside-the-box Zoom plays, while also tackling those restrictions head-on, thanks to self-aware, meme-ready campiness and sharp commentary on lives lived increasingly online.
—Juan A Ramírez, the New York Times
Naveen Kumar, TowleRoad
Elisabeth Vincentelli, the New York Times
Sarah Bay-Cheng, OnTAP (Podcast, Episode 043)
Gordon Cox, Variety
Nicole Serratore, Exeunt
Christopher Byrne, Gay City News
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review
Joseph Longo, Mel Magazine
Adam Green, Vogue
Kyle Turner, Los Angeles Review of Books
OTHER WORKS
This American Wife (2017-18)
BUZZFEED'S BEST PLAYS AND MUSICALS OF 2018
…a transfixing, thought-provoking exploration of the relationship between gay male identity and the conspicuous consumption of Bravo’s reality programming…provocative, hilarious, and (for better or worse) the most I have ever felt seen onstage.
—Louis Peitzman, Buzzfeed News
This American Wife is both [a] loving satire of the pleasures and madnesses of the franchise, and [a] piercing examination as to why this madness is so compelling; what it offers to fans and what it says about them.
—Tim Teeman, the Daily Beast
A Doll’s House, Part 3 (2018-19)
If A Doll’s House paved the way for naturalism and A Doll’s House, Part 2 exemplified contemporary realism with a light theatrical touch, this sequel-to-the-sequel pushes theater as a medium ever-daringly forward once more: A Doll’s House, Part 3 is experimental, bonkers, and delightful.
—Billy McEntee, CultureBot
[A Doll’s House, Part 3] is a raucous, unholy communion of Ibsen-referencing, inside theater baseball, and identity politics that is darkly funny and madcap. I could have spent hours with the wackadoodle Helmer Trio…While all this might sound incongruous, there is a strong dramaturgical base.”