Press
"Stess’s work stood out for the line-by-line sparkle and polish of its composition... This is dramatic portraiture of the highest order."
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins / Yale Drama Series Prize
"A superb lo-fi slow burn... a spectacularly precise structure."
"Ariel Stess's violently funny high-school comedy, I'm Pretty Fucked Up, is wrong on a lot of levels—all delicious, many disturbing."
"Ariel Stess is pulling off a good half-dozen theatrical stunts at once. And she is so impressively self-assured in her high-wire acrobatics that we focus only on the flips and dips, forgetting the gaping peril, above which the wily tricks are being performed. "
"Her style is so vivid that the next time Ms. Stess puts together a party — or a meeting or whatever it is — I’ll want to be on the guest list."
"There was something so ruthless in its revelation of the thorn-sharp twists and mysteries of quotidian middle-class family life... I still have lines from that play stuck in my head."
Julia Jarcho / The Brooklyn Rail