←Recommendations of FRIENDS WITH GUNS

With terrific, easy dialogue, and relatable characters, this play is smartly crafted to bring us to the edge of terror at the close. Powerful even in reading, and I imagine it will be even more in production. Well done.

FRIENDS WITH GUNS is a powerful portrait of progressive parents in the era of polarization and post-Trump panic. Especially poignant is its portrayal of a mother’s isolation, out of which grows her desperation for adult company. Equally truthful is the play’s portrait of that timeless need of married couples to “couple” with other married couples. FRIENDS WITH GUNS veers toward satire but only briefly as a sort of gotcha for what lies ahead. Because, there is an obstacle to all this kumbaya. It explodes, along with all the other carefully constructed tensions in this nail-biter of a play.

FRIENDS WITH GUNS was a finalist for InterAct's inaugural New Play Development Award. Out of a record-breaking 432 submissions, FRIENDS WITH GUNS stood out to us through its specific characters and its clever, surprising, feminist approach to gun ownership.

It is the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's pleasure to recommend Stephanie Alison Walker and their play Friends With Guns as a finalist for our 2018 National Playwrights Conference. The play rose through a competitive, anonymous, multileveled selection process that took nearly nine months to execute. As one of 53 finalists out of more than 1,4200 submissions, the strength of its writing has allowed this work to prosper in such a competitive selection process.

Friends with Guns is a fresh, funny, surprising, and powerful new play. It feels like a play we need right now and I sincerely hope to see it produced all over the country.

This play is one of the best I've read on NPX. It's more than deserving of its awards. In fact, it needs more awards. Lots more awards--all of them. It is funny and tense and realistic and absolutely terrifying and timely and the structure is so perfect and I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about this play. I feel like I just took a masterclass. Expect to see Stephanie Alison Walker's name a LOT more with writing like this. Read this play immediately and then produce it with your best actors, best designers, and best director.

This play is incredibly timely, relevant, and well handled. The dialogue is extremely well crafted, and the characters are complex and multi-dimensional. I would love to see this production staged. Heck, I would love to be in a production. There's a lot to unpack here, no matter which side of the issues you land on. Excellent play that leaves you really thinking about your own beliefs and stances.

A masterful piece for the right foursome with strong scenes for F/F, M/F and M/M. Well-crafted, excellently paced, and a scene study dream. Fully locked and loaded.

This is an extremely well-crafted and deeply engaging play. I connected with the characters and was drawn into this world and the relationships. I think it will leave a lot of readers and audiences facing important questions about their own beliefs and behaviors.

A prescient and important play that flips the script on liberal attitudes towards gun ownership, and becomes a powerful piece about what it is like to be in the skin of a woman. It doesn't take sides as much as it challenges strongly held beliefs, while also being a deeply feminist work that surprised me at every turn. I could not put it down.