Articles

Back Stage Magazine: Feature story on the Ateh

OffOffbway: Interview with Bridgette Dunlap

Trenton Times: Article about the Ateh's education program.

Reviews

Long Distance

If yours is a normal family, it probably isn’t very normal at all. We all know that family life is part facade, that a layer of weirdness or tension or both lurks beneath the Kodak moments. “Long Distance,” a program of three one-acts adapted from stories by Judy Budnitz, captures family life as it is but isn’t: skewed, unreal but somehow painfully accurate.--The New York Times

The Girl Detective

And as this mesmerizing play progresses, it comes to resemble a dream. Odd characters waltz through—Chinese waiters, 12 dancing sisters. In the under world, words and images are slippery, memory is unstable, and things that mean the most to us (like the color of our lover's eyes) threaten to disappear faster than the Girl Detective can changes disguises. Beneath its fizzy fun, the play asks a question that haunts our nightmares: What if life is a series of increasingly serious losses—first, a cat runs away, then our husband vamooses with the secretary, then we forget our mother's face—until the underworld claims all and we are left with nothing? -The Village Voice

Thanks to crisp direction, winning performances by a talented cast, and above all, brilliant choreography, the Ateh Theater Group’s production, at the beautiful Connelly Theater in Manhattan’s East Village, is a pleasure.
Led by Birthday (the buoyant Alexis Grausz, who has the makings of a Broadway star), the dancers set the humorous and playful tone that infuse the rest of the story even in its more somber moments. The title character is played with regal innocence by the tall, spectral Kathryn Ekblad. This is a production driven by crisp pacing, divine dancing, and an ensemble of actors who clearly love working together. But the show-stopper is a scene in which our heroine, who “eats dreams” (instead of food), darts among a mass of many people’s dreams come to life. It’s real theater magic. -Blog Critics

Short-story writer Kelly Link has a way of making the odd seem plausibly mundane through the word spells she casts with her simple language and fairy-tale-noir imagery. The Ateh Theater Group tackles Link's material with the same no-nonsense attitude in Bridgette Dunlap's adaptation and direction of The Girl Detective. Emily French's spare set — a storybook house, a tree made from branches attached to a ladder — conjures a dreamy land…Ekblad is versatile enough to project both an innocence and a wisdom……Done with a style and wit to create postmodern mythology. -Back Stage Magazine

Bridgette Dunlap’s adaptation of Kelly Link’s short story unfurls with the strange and causal logic of dreams, blending the magic surrealism of fairy tales with the “just the facts, ma’am” trajectory of detective fiction. It’s a gleefully odd, fearsomely intelligent production that challenges the audience to take on the mystery of human longing: the possibility of finding that missing person—that person that one sometimes believes one sees in another’s eyes….If you should go looking for The Girl Detective during this limited engagement, be sure to pack a mirror as well as a looking glass. Bridgette Dunlap has created a theatrical experience to find yourself in again and again. -United Stages

Smart and coherent, with a crisply competent ensemble cast, it manages to capture the dreamy dislocation and strict emotional logic of Link's work, taking it out of the realm of pure language into a lot of very clever staging: visual, kinesthetic, musical . . . leaving you with that same feeling that you've understood nothing and comprehended everything. It's also funny and entertaining and moving - the tap-dancing, boa-wearing bank robbing lineup alone is worth the price of admission. -Ellen Kushner Online

Mr. A's Amazing Maze Plays

The Ateh Theater Group’s production of Mr. A’s Amazing Maze Plays is perhaps the most delightful show I’ve ever seen Off-Broadway. -New Theater Corps

The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

The talented cast of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt handles the heavy lifting expertly. Their enthusiasm generates a soft hum of joyousness that pervades the production and rubs off on the audience. - NYtheatre.com

Director and adaptor Bridgette Dunlap has a fine sense of pacing and tone and a knack for knockabout comedy. - Hotreview.org
The cast is uniformly strong…Kathryn Ekblad's Fire Girl is a standout, and she offers a fine, emotionally resonant performance. - Offoffonline.com

An emotional hour and a half of participation in funny, sad, and disturbing lives…Sara Montgomery is a standout! - The Columbia Spectator

Elizabeth Neptune is a standout! - Downtown Express

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Anyone who has read the original knows that Lewis Carroll's convoluted rhymes and incessant puns can be daunting for the young - a little like trying to swim through the deep pool that Alice weeps. But Bridgette Dunlap, the playwright and director, and her collaborators - including the costume designer Katja Andreiev, the prop designer Emily French and the artist Manny Silva - have created so much stunning visual comedy that children don't need to understand every word. And those who do will find their experience only enriched by the nonstop antics onstage. -The New York Times