Clare Barron Plays 1: Dirty Crusty; You Got Older; I'll Never Love Again; Dance Nation

by Clare Barron

In recent years Clare Barron has emerged as one of the most acclaimed and exciting new voices in American drama.
The first ever collection of her work, this volume contains I'll Never Love Again, You Got Older, Dance Nation and Dirty Crusty.

I'll Never Love Again
A theatrical chamber piece about first love, first heartbreak and how those early teenage experiences haunt the rest of our lives, I'll Never Love Again was created from the playwright's real high school diary, and recalls the anguish and mysteries of sex and love during adolescence.

You Got Older
Mae returns home to help take care of Dad and – maybe (a little) – herself. You Got Older is a tender and darkly comic new play about family, illness, and cowboys – and how to remain standing when everything you know comes crashing down around you.

Dance Nation
Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they'll claw their way to the top at the Boogie Down Grand Prix in Tampa Bay. Yet these young dancers have more than choreography on their minds, as every plié and jeté is a step toward finding themselves and unleashing their power.

Dirty Crusty
Jeanine is determined to improve her life. With sex. With dance. With new hobbies, like horticulture. But self-improvement is hard. Reclaiming your dreams is hard. And personal hygiene is really, really hard.

Genres: Plays

480 pages, Paperback

Published November 12, 2020

About the author

Clare Barron is a playwright and actor from Wenatchee, Washington. She won the 2015 Obie Award for Playwriting for You Got Older. She was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dance Nation.

Source: Wikipedia

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Isabel Mehta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read Dirty Crusty. Read Dance Nation in college. I just cried on the train Barron is a tremendous and creative playwright and I want to read everything she has written

[aster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clare Barron has such a singular voice in playwriting that is fully apparent in this anthology. As the introduction notes, it is cool to see the resonances across her career (ballet in "Dirty Crusty" to "Dance Nation"). Barron writes about pre-teenage experience in such a vivid, visceral way. It is sort of crazy to me that she took classes with Deb Margolin: the imprint of automatic writing is so evident on these pieces in their disparate,

My favorite of the four, "Dance Nation", is uncompromising in its brutality, demonstrating Barron at her most inventive and agile. It is no surprise that it was a Pulitzer finalist: it is tight and controlled in a way some of Barron's other works can splay out.

"I'll Never Love Again" was a surprising highlight for me: I loved the use of chorus to denaturalize Clare's voice and create an intensely personal look at her own development. So much pain hides within the lines of that piece, which Barron notes in her introduction, and it is in this work where that unprocessed grief is most tangible and visceral.

"You Got Older", while slightly unfocused at times, does a brilliant job at creating the sort of vacuousness/rhythm of inter-family small talk, amidst an ongoing medical emergency. "Dirty Crusty" epitomizes the pitfalls of Barron, where these disparate parts become almost incoherent. It perplexes me that this could be read, in some ways, as a satire on a romantic comedy. I don't know, there's something about it that I don't buy!!

Overall, an excellent spread of work by an excellent playwright. I look forward to the moment when I get to see all of these works staged!!!

[Charlie Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dance Nation is worth a 4 star review, but the rest of the collection is a little underwhelming. To be fair, some of it is very experimental and I feel like it would work better live than on the page. That excuse doesn't really justify a higher review though and I don't think I'll be rereading anything here.

Dance Nation is a good dissection of the pressure on young people in competitive performance disciplines, but it's very long. You Got Older has some nice observations and interactions between a family going through a tragic circumstances. Dirty Crusty was okay, although I felt that one particular major plot element came a little out of the blue. I'll Never Love Again is an autobiographical piece about sexuality and was trying too hard to be funny whilst kind of lacking in structure.

[Amy Pilgrim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clare’s chaotic writing style makes for a very interesting and relatable read. I am in love with the way she writes so human. Of all the plays in this book, Dance Nation and You Got Older are by far my favorites. Clare isn’t scared to write of sexuality/sex which makes all of her plays very distinct.

[jay daniells · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dirty crusty⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
You got older⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’ll never love again⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Dance nation ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[kaylee rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

1 You Got Older
2 Dirty Crusty
3 Dance Nation
4 I’ll Never Love Again

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dirty Crusty: 3 stars
You Got Older: 4 stars
I’ll Never Love Again: 3 stars
Dance Nation: 4 stars

[karys · Rating 5 out of 5]

unhinged in the best possible way.

[Caroline]

dance nation is so special and you got older made me, i’m not exaggerating, sob

[Ashley Lyon]

Honored to live in a time when Clare Barron writes plays

[clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

god