Drama Queens, a five-star arts journal focusing on female artists

Review by Amy Frateo

Writer Sophie MacIntosh and director Cassidy Kepp have given us a play so simple yet so devastating. Zoom plays and playwrights are consistently looking for ways of enhancing and invigorating their zoom play. MacIntosh and Kepp have done just that – by tearing our hearts out. They have turned those little boxes into purgatory.

Wounded is innovative. Wounded is deeply moving. Wounded in brilliant. Wounded takes place in a void. Maybe it’s a group of zoom squares it might in a biblical middle-ground, it might be in some dark part of our minds or souls.

We meet a group of five women stranded in this place for the duration, sharing their stories and offering solace to each other. Their stories: how they were murdered at the hands of someone they may have known.

We arrive along with one woman who may have known her killer. Her four commiserators attempt to ease her slowly into her new reality.

Vacillating between caring for each other and uncontrollable rage, Wounded tells the stories of these five victims marinating in regret, guilt, and fury. Each supporting the other out of thinking it was their fault or that the man who did this was “not like that,” we come face to face with gory details and emotional agony with every line.

The ensemble of five gave us superior acting and extreme reality. The hints of make-up showing bruises to bullet wounds was just enough to make us feel their pain without the effects being the star as one might find in a filmed version of something like this.

Lily Brenner as Lauren, the newcomer, gave us a sense of terror with each new discovery, her sense of realism was stunning; Juliana Cerón, implying she was a victim of a hate crime brought the audience to a sense of rage by letting her own fury burn deeply over and over; Elena Cramer broke our hearts with a strong sense of delusion over her assailant (ironically a perfect compliment to Ms. Cramer as both made us want to kill these men ourselves); Paulina De La Parra, a standout, became some form of support to them and whose reaction shots brilliantly amplified all of their pain. Her accent and implied death (gunshot) allowed us to mediate on the world’s view of women; and Sofía Figueroa’s frailty and melancholy allowed the tone to pervade every second.

The only criticism is the pacing. Virtual performance is difficult to gauge in terms of pace and speed and there were times when the show lagged a bit. Maybe a bit of cutting to bring the piece to a solid hour would help that. However, the dialogue was so engrossing, one hardly notices.

Wounded – with a few slight edits – should be sent to schools and organizations; made required at universities; and broadcast wherever ignorance and misogyny prevail.

Y’know, everywhere.