How to Defend Yourself
by Liliana Padilla

"The stunningly lit scene seemed to play in slow motion, peeling back years of learned social behaviors to evoke the both terrifying and exciting possibilities of tenderness, sex, danger and passion."

— The New York Times

"Deliver[s] harrowing subject matter with a surprising amount of humor and levity... the dialogue takes an honest and irreverent tone, perfectly capturing the mood, voice and habits of hardly mature twentysomethings."

— Chicago Sun Times

"Padilla is so incredibly smart. They’ve written a play that doesn’t simply address the campus rape culture crisis solely within the silo of toxic masculinity, but are also looking at the way the culture thrives because it’s been insulated by white privilege. And not just white male privilege, but the ways white women are also complicit and even might be daring to ask the extent to which people of color can be too. It’s a play that asks us to look at how sometimes our trauma can warp our sense of reality, can have us grasping at a false sense of safety, can have us transform from innocent bystander to witness to silent third-party perpetrator, can put us in that place, in that aftermath where ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t mean anything."

— Louisville Public Media

"To really deal with the tricky question of how organic desire bumps up against a kind of learned self-objectification means that Padilla has to be willing to voice opposition to the standard progressive line that dominates non-profit theater — and this play does... Very few young playwrights can do this so well."

— Chicago Tribune