Staci Swedeen

A Little Bit of Culture
Shorts bring fresh look to old hits - Best of the Fest: In Staci Swedeen’s A Little Bit of Culture, Wahl plays a benumbed husband whose boredom during a flute intensive concert leads him to flights of balletic fantasy. - Christine Dohlen, Miami Herald.


The Pennysaver

Among the most satisfying efforts are Swedeen’s The Pennysaver, about a wildly dysfunctional family’s futile attempt to sell a bed. The script delivers both madly inventive situations and a series of outstanding punch lines.
Backstage.Com (George Capewell, 6/​21/​2000)

Imagine sitting through 18 plays in a single night without getting any complaints from your posterior. City Theatre, a new company comprised of a lot of old hands, makes it possible with a mostly zippy program called Summer Shorts…. The variety of topics and situations alone makes for an interesting evening. Summer Shorts offers more than most sketch-based nightclub acts, character-based performance art or topical revues. Many of the mini one-acts are, arguably, complete plays….In The Pennysaver by Staci Swedeen, Randolph purrs as a giant family cat, the favorite of mama Margot Moreland, who sells her bratty child (Aymee Garcia) along with the furniture before moving to a new house.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
By JACK ZINK Theater Writer

Shorts fest long on talent and quality….Staci Swedeen’s The Pennysaver is a black comic piece about a woman who wants to sell a bed and winds up throwing her little girl in as part of the deal. Randoph is especially smashing as a very large, very self satisfied cat.
– Christine Dohlen. The Miami Herald, June 25, 1996

Staci Swedeen’s comic swipe at a dysfunctional family preparing to leave one house and move into a bigger and better one.
Pamela Gordon, New Times

“ James Randolph voted “Best Actor in a Comedy” when he outdid himself in a comic turn at Pusscat, the petulant family kitty in Staci Swedeen’s uproarious swipe at suburban family values.”
- New Times Best of Miami

Theme and Variation
Light, fast paced productions – Tom Wahl plays a preachers kid in the world premiere of Staci Swedeen’s Theme and Variation with Suzanne Kreitman Taylor the recipient of a memory lesson that “sometimes virtue is its own reward.
- Skip Sheffield, Boca News

Wahl is another kind of voyeur with his eye on Taylor s the girl in the window in Theme and Variation by Staci Swedeen….consistently interesting. Jack Zink, Sun-Sentinel Times


The highlight is the first piece, Staci Swedeen’s Couple Capacity, in which a lonely young woman shares her romantic disillusionment with the audience at the excruciatingly affectionate couple beside her get closer and closer to playing footsie in the biblical sense.
Jeffery Lewonczyk, nytheatre.com review of Galley Players Black Box New Play Festival 2004

The most enjoyable play is Couple Capacity by Staci Swedeen, largely due to the hilarious performance of Angie Radosh as the loveless eccentric alone at the movies bemoaning her fate while a lusty couple make out next to her.
Tony Guzman, Sun Post

Krietman (as Sexual Man) wordlessly steals audience attention in Staci Swedeen’s Couple Capacity, about a lovelorn woman who attracts make-out artists around her at the movies…. –
Hap Erstein, The Palm Beach Post

Details

Gail Garrisan directs Staci Swedeen’s serio-comic Details with finesse, showing the bedrock relationship beneath the couple’s bickering.
Jack Zink, Sun Sentinel


Staci Swedeen’s Details is the right length…it documents the worst nightmare of an obsessive compulsive wife whose vacation is endangered by an unfinished to do list.
Savannah Whaley, New Times 1997

Details selected for the 8 Minute Madness 2007 – Finalist - NYC –
Turtleshell Productions, directed by Julie S. Halpern

Party Games
Funny, but also with some really poignant moments….
The Knoxville News Sentinel 2001

Feliz Navidad

Winter Short one act plays are long on enjoyment – Feliz Navidad by Staci Swedeen with a hard boiled, inconsiderate Christmas shopper stymied by a Hispanic clerk who understands more than we think. Jack Zink, Sun Sentinel

Staci Swedeen’s Feliz Navidad is an artful bilingual piece, bringing together a harried shopper and a supposedly bilingual clerk who’s waaaay more comfortable in Spanish than English. When they finally do communicate, it has more to do with emotion than words.
Christine Dohlen, Miami Herald.