The community of National Committee readers for the 47th Bay Area Playwrights Festival advanced Sarai’s Knife as a Semi-Finalist at Playwrights Foundation. We specifically leaned into the stylistic daring of this piece; the use of collage as a structure for exploring a character’s subjective experience was exciting and effective. We hope this play is considered for further development and investigation, and finds dedicated collaborators in this play’s journey towards production.

They say artists are without country, without political party, so, what do you get if you add the radicalism and rebelliousness of youth to that mix? The character of Jaeda is one smart, implacable cookie, unwilling to serve or be used by any establishment, any institution, anyone. The new generation always baffles the current one, and it is this relationship that John Minigan's play, 'Sarai's Knife', gets absolutely right. Art and protest are both so personal an act, they might be a cryptogram.

This is a thought-provoking play on so many levels, among them race and art. It's a highly visual play that would be so fascinating to see staged. I also found it very compelling to watch Sarai's journey in finding herself -- something that felt surprising and unique, as so often stories follow students discovering identity, not their teachers.