Karen Malpede’s latest creation evokes the wordless love people and animals can experience . . . Hannah Doyle is at wit’s end with grief and rage when she sees Blue galloping in an open, but fenced-in field. She is immediately smitten.
What unfolds . . . is an intense meditation on freedom, love, patience, taming, and compromise. In short, it’s the stuff of human connection.
— Eleanor J. Bader, The Indypendent

A moving, beautiful, and highly theatrical exploration of the necessity and the difficulty of forgiveness.
— Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature, and Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY

George and Kathleen steal the air . . . A real kick in the gut and terrific writing.
— Naomi Wallace, playwright, MacArthur Fellow

Sublime writing, first very realistic, then a slow build toward poetic monologues that are glorious and heartbreaking.
— Linda Eisenstein, composer, playwright, chief theatre correspondent for angle: a journal of arts + culture

Gorgeous, deeply affecting, and provocative.
— Kim Marra, Professor Emerita of Theatre Arts and American Studies, University of Iowa

A clip from the full performance of Blue Valiant.

A beautiful blue roan horse becomes the catalyst for a surprising journey.

From the World Premiere production at Farm Arts Collective, directed by Karen Malpede, starring Kathleen Chalfant and George Bartenieff, introducing Millie Ortiz, and featuring Arthur Rosen in a musical rendering of Blue. Costume design by Sally Parsons, lighting design by Tony Giovannetti, projections by Ellen Lynch. Photographs courtesy of Ellen Lynch © 2021. (For the full performance see: http://theaterthreecollaborative.org/blue-valiant.)

An introduction to the play by Karen Malpede

Drawing by Biba Kayewich

Karen Malpede is a downtown New York Theater mainstay known for her unflagging commitment to social justice. —Brad Rothbart, American Theatre

Karen Malpede’s plays scream “Pay Attention.” —Cindy Rosenthal, The Theatre Times

Karen Malpede is the author/director of 20 plays and co- founder with actor/producer George Bartenieff of Theater Three Collaborative, a thirty-four-year-old, Obie winning New York-based theater company that develops and premieres her poetic language, social justice plays.

More on Malpede

For an anthology of her recent work see: Plays in Time