Staff Meal
by Abe Koogler

"A quietly surreal shape-shifter of a play with a tilted sense of humor and a generous, sorrowful heart. We tumble through its funny, eerie evocation of the moment that made – is still making – our present, and we come out the other side feeling, for all its ebb toward emptiness, full."

— New York Magazine

"Scenes zig and zag in a dream logic… It’s hard to describe exactly what happens in Staff Meal, much less diminish your enjoyment of its uncanny, elegiac flux. Koogler stokes our affection for the comforts of civilization but also underscores how fragile they are. Take my advice: book a table."

— Observer

"Koogler’s brilliance as a playwright is how he captures the real while hinting at the eternal. Just when it seems like he is trying to strangle your heart with tension, he goes ahead and breaks it with simplicity."

— New City Stage

"Koogler’s characters are earnest, idiosyncratic, and suspicious of hierarchy. Often bitingly funny, Koogler’s play reveal larger truths about the economic and racial systems under which we all live."

— Yale Review