press. | Sara Farrington

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It takes audacity to recreate the circumstances behind a movie whose stature is sacred. “CasablancaBox” — a production at Here, a downtown locus of experimental theater — is a brave, almost foolhardy undertaking, presenting the backstage drama during the making of “Casablanca,” and daring its audience to compare its cast members to the actors in what many believe to be the finest Hollywood movie of all time.

- THE NEW YORK TIMES (CasablancaBox)

Embodies its subject through design and theme, cramming together as much energy and detail as its running time permits, in the end mirroring Casablanca as an overfull steamer trunk forced shut under protest, ever on the point of bursting apart..."CasablancaBox" is a brisk ninety minutes of entertainment first and foremost, a breakneck-paced behind-the-scenes comedy in the style of Truffaut’s Day for Night, catnip even for the most casual cinephile.

--THE VILLAGE VOICE (CasablancaBox)

Written by Sara Farrington and directed by Reid Farrington, this jittery dance-theatre piece, performed by five actors in kimonos, begins in 1957, in Kyoto, where Marlon Brando was acting in the film “Sayonara” and Truman Capote interviewed him for a Profile in this magazine. (Jennifer McClinton stands out as a slinky Capote, as does Lynn R. Guerra as Brando’s mother.) It then imagines that interview extending to the end of Brando’s life, conflates his movie dialogue with his actual biography, tosses in bits of Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” and loops them, in a manner suggestive of Noh theatre. Why? It’s anyone’s guess, but it looks great, with sound (by Marcelo Añez), lights (by Laura Mroczkowski), choreography (by Laura K. Nicoll), movie clips, and props working together in sometimes dazzling concert.

THE NEW YORKER (BrandoCapote)

BrandoCapote is ambitious, non-linear, memorable and wholly original.

BROADWAYWORLD (BrandoCapote)

A fascinating gem that takes a difficult subject and quietly revels in it.

THEATRESCENE (BrandoCapote)

Farrington realizes her vision with superior artistry. On a small stage with spare furnishings that evoke the period, she has the cast of four positioned precisely yet fluidly throughout as they deliver majestic performances. Combined with the accomplished technical elements this all results in a visually and emotionally arresting experience.

THEATRESCENE (Leisure, Labor, Lust)

“They don’t kill civilians,” Irina mutters to herself repeatedly at the start of Sara Farrington’s powerful new play “A Trojan Woman." Maybe if she keeps saying it enough times, she seems to be thinking, she will actually believe it...

“A Trojan Woman” consists, mostly, of … I’m not sure what to call it. A vision? A dream? A break in the space-time continuum? But there is an explosion, Irina is knocked down and, when she wakes up, she declares, “This is Troy!" She then proceeds to present a modern, one-woman version of Euripides’ 415 BC tragedy “The Trojan Women,” which is about the suffering of the women of Troy after the Greeks won The Trojan War...It’s an impressive endurance feat by Kabashi, who has the stage to herself for nearly an hour and has a number of emotionally harrowing scenes to make it through.

NJARTS.net (A Trojan Woman)

Sara Farrington has devised a taut, relevant version of the Euripides play.

THE REVIEW HUB, London (A Trojan Woman

The play is a potent examination of how societal constraints and personal weaknesses lead to dishonesty, both with oneself and the people who are closest, and the ripple effect that can have.

NEW YORK THEATRE REVIEW (Leisure, Labor, Lust)

To tell you more would spoil the twists and turns of this little gem of a play, but Farrington's script is a funny and searching discussion of the intersection of art and commerce. What does it mean for art when huge decisions about what gets financed are made by corporate bureaucracies that have very different interests from artists?

NYTHEATRE.COM (The Rise & Fall of Miles & Milo)

Words on paper cannot begin to describe the effect this play will have on those who see it. Its message may be as old as time but it is one that repeats down through the ages. I cannot urge you more strongly to see A Trojan Woman before its all-too-brief run ends at West Orange’s Luna Stage.

OUTINJERSEY.NET (A Trojan Woman)

Drita Kabashi is the perfect vessel to transmit these unsettling ideas. With her hair arranged like that of a Greek statue and wearing a dress inside out, she searingly performs all the parts—the widowed Queen Hecuba of Troy, her daughter-in-law Andromache, her daughter Cassandra, the Greek herald Talthybius, King Menelaus of Sparta, the gods Poseidon and Athena, even a chorus of five captive Trojan women—switching from one to another by way of a prop, a facial expression and body posture, and a change of voice that, while disconcerting for the audience at first, nevertheless proves to be quite effective and affecting.

NJARTSMAVEN.net (A Trojan Woman)

Honduras is a brief, yet brutal, immersion in the chaotic and pitiless treatment of immigrants coming illegally to the US from the country of the title. Sara Farrington's script, based on real events, focuses on several characters traveling a road on which all the exit ramps lead to tragedy....Farrington is, arguably, plunging us, forcibly, into the characters' disorienting journeys -- both their unexpected moments of grace and bitter twists of fate. The playwright's method is to grab the audience and never let go. Honduras means to shake you up and it does just that.

LIGHTING & SOUND IN AMERICA (Honduras)