Baltimore
by Kirsten Greenidge

"There's a compelling urgency running through Baltimore, and the play is another demonstration of Greenidge's grasp of social nuance, along with her understanding of racial and ethnic experience and identity in all their complexity... In the diversity of its dramatis personae and in the issues that drive the play, Baltimore feels utterly contemporary."

"The play ended with a push to start the conversation, so forceful that the minute it ended, I turned to my friend and began discussing what we just saw... I have never before experienced a performance where such a variety of ethnicities, political ideologies, sexual orientations and economic classes were addressed."

"The trap that playwrights can fall into when forging a piece around burning social issues is that the dialogue can become preachy and trite. Kirsten Greenidge avoids this by creating a very real central character who is as confused and frustrated by race issues as the audience. Shelby wants a world in which race doesn't matter so badly that she puts blinders on and pretends it's already true."

"The gap Greenidge explores here, of knowledge versus information (and wisdom versus opinion), is a recurrent one in literature but it's never been more timely than it is now."