←Recommendations of A Driving Beat

heartfelt mother-son relationship that asks questions about identity, race, and family with an ending I didn't see coming!

a tender play about a mother and son at odds with trying to both discover and cling to their past--warm until the very end, despite it all.

A beautiful, heartfelt journey of the search for identity and the relationship of a mother to her son that moves you. Well done.

What a beautiful and tenderly written play! Mateo and Diane's relationship was realistically drawn, subtly shaded, and poignantly sweet and intimate. The poetry that punctuates deftly drawn scenes provides key insights into Mateo's identity and journey. Because we have those moments, Ramirez Puckett is able to tell us so much about Mateo without betraying that realistic tendency of teens to hold back and pick and choose what to share. I'm floored by how the dramatic action is so crystal clear, but entirely based off these small little seismic shifts within and between characters that are exquisite to watch.

I had the great pleasure of getting to see this play at the 2019 Athena Project. Ramirez Puckett deftly weaves humor, pathos, and revelation in this deceptively simple story navigating identify, family, and the ties that bind us across distance and time. Beautifully written characters (the complexity and authenticity of Mateo is a stand-out), and storytelling throughout.

I loved this play when I saw it at The Athena Project 2019! When mother and son start off on a road trip to find his birth mom, they're not the only ones in for a ride. With a masterful mix of comedy, poetry, authentic teenspeak, and unconditional love, Ramirez Puckett tackles heavy subjects with a light touch, and weaves a seemingly simple series of road trip vignettes into a tapestry that is anything but. With a cast of three of barely a set, the show will be easy to produce and a joy to watch.

We are pleased to support this play! It was a Finalist for the 2019 New Works Festival at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas, Texas.

Poignant and very well written - I have a 15 year old son right now, and Ramirez Puckett does a great job with that young male voice! And his confusions and identity issues and fears - the ICE official scene is chilling! There are some great American details, and the language - quite a treat!

There is so much to love about this play: an honest and complicated yet deeply compassionate story about an adopted son and his mother; a masterful use of a natural parent-child vernacular and Mateo's own poetic beat woven throughout the text; and a cross-country road trip that brings the audience both into the awkward confines of a car with your parent and out into a greater world that transcends the one we understand as lines on a map. Themes of identity, culture, how to move forward, family, and love make this play deeply personal and unequivocally universal.

A beautiful play about identity, finding yourself, and loss. The layers of this mother and son relationship as they drive across the county are so deep and at times heart breaking. I was also drawn in by the theatricality throughout, the empty spaces that become the locations in the play through the characters, the doubling of roles tied through the whole piece, and the lack of "things" all worked really well together. It's a play that jumped to its feet just from reading it off the page and something I'd love to see produced. Well done!