Rousuck's Review: "Samsara" at Single Carrot Theatre

WYPR - 88.1 FM Baltimore | By J. Wynn Rousuck,

Tom Hall

Published February 9, 2017 at 12:00 PM EST

The unborn baby (Utkarsh Rajawat) watches as Craig (Paul Diem) listens to his heartbeat inside Suraiya (Saraniya Tharmarajah).

Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck joins us every Thursday with her reviews of regional stage productions. Today she's here to talk about Samsara, a new play by Lauren Yee now on stage at the Single Carrot Theatre that explores good intentions and unintended consequences, in a story that takes audiences from Northern California to India. An American couple hoping to have a child engage a surrogate mother in India, whose pregnancy becomes an unexpectedly cathartic experience for her and the American parents. Their lives, and the life of the unborn child, intertwine in a karmic cycle of life, death and rebirth known to Hindus and Buddhists by the Sanskrit word, samsara.

Samsara continues at the Single Carrot Theatre through Sunday, February 12th.

J. Wynn Rousuck

J. WynnRousuckhas been reviewing theater for WYPR's Midday (and previously, Maryland Morning) since 2007. Prior to that, she was the theater critic of The Baltimore Sun, where she reviewed more than 3,000 plays over the course of 23 years. Her feature coverage for The Sun included a comprehensive series chronicling the development of the Tony Award-winning musical, “Hairspray.” Judy got her start at The Cleveland Press and at Cleveland’s fine arts radio station,WCLV. Her broadcasting experience also includes a year as an on-air theater critic for Maryland Public Television.A member of the Artistic Advisory Committee of Young Audiences of Maryland, Judy is also a freelance teacher for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and the Hippodrome Foundation, Inc. (the Hippodrome’s non-profit partner, which focuses on education and outreach). She was a faculty member at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Critics Institute in Waterford, CT, for two decades; she is a former National Endowment for Humanities Journalism Fellow; and she was a visiting student at Brown University (2007-2008), under the mentorship of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Paula Vogel. Judy and her husband, Alan Fink, share their home with two dogs, who enjoy hearing their “Master’s Voice” on WYPR.

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Tom Hall

Host, Midday (M-F 12:00-1:00)

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