Kinderkrankenhaus

"Children's literature, television, entertainment (in general) used to be weird.... Someone who obviously did embrace the weirdness ... is Jesi Bender, whose marvelous play, Kinderkrankenhaus, is rather like an episode of The Letter People if Edward Gorey were asked to direct a script written by Jacques Derrida. Gorey and Bender would likely get along wonderfully, since Gorey claimed he didn't write children's books and Bender's work, though it focuses on many kids, isn't exactly for children either....

"Can we ever truly be free of language, free in a way that would actually let us know ourselves? I'm not so sure we can. But, like Bender, I do think we can question language, we can twist it around, toss it back and forth, laugh at it, play with it (oboy can we play! yes we can play!), we can play with it as we might if we were children hanging out with our friends using our imaginations to color the gray world."

-Andrew Farkas, in Heavy Feather

"Kinderkrankenhaus is a play of agency. Of how agency is given and un-given. The agency of children. The agency of a word. This or it? Are they the same thing? In Kinderkrankenhaus, Jesi Bender provides a new manual for the words, ahem, worlds, that are allowed, and how to allow them anyway. 'Isn't everything made visible through me?' Bender asks, answers."

-Dalton Day, author of Exit, Pursued

"With this bold new piece of hybrid playwriting, Jesi Bender deftly choreographs the traumas of abandonment (familial & societal) alongside the treasures of youth. These lines will pull you in, but like Kinderkrankenhaus's stage, Bender's words are edged with sparks. Let them warn and warm you alike."

-Tyler Crumrine, editor of Plays Inverse Press