"Some make Holder teach the audience about some aspect of playwriting. Some ask participation of said audience (I had to yell something out the door at one point). Some are intensely intimate, like when Holder has to take us line by line through a recent bank statement. They seem haphazard at first, but over the course of the night the cards (which can't be that random) form a deftly constructed story of an artist struggling with both tangible concerns and a lot of self-doubt."
"It's a sparse play without a lot of action, and it demands plenty of self-control from the audience. But at the intimate Minetta Lane Theatre, it slowly tightens its grip with tense, enrapturing dialogue. Each sentence feels like it has multiple meanings, and as those sentences built on top of one another, I was in awe of what they constructed."
Out Of Order uses a deck of written prompts to generate a spontaneous performance for a roughly 20-person audience, mixing playwriting lessons, audience participation, and intimate moments such as reading a bank statement line by line. The prompts initially appear haphazard but coalesce into a carefully constructed story about an artist facing practical concerns and deep self-doubt, with the removal of the fourth wall fostering intimacy. Jen Silverman's adaptation of Strindberg's Creditors relies on sparse action and taut, multi-meaning dialogue that tightens its grip in an intimate theater. Industry trends favored one- and two-person productions as cost-effective responses to funding cuts, inflation, and subscription declines.
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