"....enthralling play....Sevan is a remarkable actor and storyteller. Sevan flows seamlessly between portraying herself and the other character....Sevan's strong charisma and her ability to keep the pace fast without feeling rushed are impressive. The tightly written script is honest and unafraid to jump radically from dark moments to humerous ones. The play is ultimately about not giving up....a celebration of life....and an example of how good a one person show can be. Kirk Douglas came onstage and praised her talent and her bravery. He was right on both accounts."
BackStage/Jeff Favre Critics Pick
"Sevan an energetic, endearing, enthusiastic performer mixes comedy with tragedy as she craftily blends....the art and power of the spoken word. Out of it comes a message for mourners as well as survivors."
Hollywood Reporter/Ed Kaufman
"A inviting character study with a cinematic air....has all the earmarks of a Holywood chic pic, but pays dividends in the theatre through rich description and exacting lanuguage. This work has a healthy life ahead of it."
Variety/Phil Gallo
".....spinning a thought-provoking tale out of diverse autobiographical threads.... (Taking Flight) bears witness to the way personal struggle connects to a larger public conflict."
LA Times/Charles McNulty
“The best dramatic monologists conjure not just people, but worlds with their well chosen words. Sevan joins the ranks of the best with her harrowing, humorous, and openhearted, TAKING FLIGHT.”
Anne Marie Welsh/SD Union Tribune
“Sevan is funny, pensive, poignant, brave, and utterly captivating in a piece that speaks to everyone who’s ever had a friend or been one.
Jean Lowerison/GL Times
“TAKING FLIGHT soars from take-off Moment 1 to landing Moment 80! I pondered between which elements… Sevan’s writing of the script or acting out of the numerous wonderful characters, which was the more brilliant? This play was a moment (80 of them) of tremendous theatre satisfaction!”
Rob Appel/SD Theatre Scene
“Sevan was incredible….with an amazing story to tell…and she tells it stunningly! The humor, the emotion, and the joy of discovery are palpable in this story of healers, shamans, and women who care. A real celebration of life!
Jeff Dowler/Coastal San Diego
“Sevan is a magnificent performer…she’s warm, funny, intense, multi-lingual, physically agile, spiritually centered and graceful. Her story of healing and help, of the limits and boundaries of friendship and love is told through a pitch perfect performance, under the direction of Giovanna Sardelli. It’s a marvelous way to spend a brief, enlightening, life-affirming evening.
Pat Launer/ SD Theatre Scene
INTERVIEWS
Interview with Cris Gross on the process of creating TAKING FLIGHT.
Radio Interview with Jennifer Berry on Theatre Innovators: The process of writing and performing TAKING FLIGHT.
AUDIENCE TESTIMONIALS
“Adriana Sevan takes flight with this profound and delightful script, and sheds light into the room of the soul through her storytelling. A magnificent piece for the theatre, an allegory of our times…”
Nilo Cruz, Playwright/ Winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for Anna in the Tropics 2003
“Written and performed with joy, passion, and soul,Taking Flight does what we ask of all important worksof art: it adds beauty to a hungry, wounded world ...it heals with its honesty and burns with its truths. A play about healing, it heals you as you watch it and embraces you like a long forgotten love.”
Jose Rivera, Academy Award nominated screenwriter/playwright
“Adriana Sevan’s Taking Flight, an exquisitely written and wonderfully acted solo performance, transports her audience to a realm which encompasses the heights of divine intervention and the depths of human suffering connected by a remarkable degree of lightness, exactitude and humor. Through her courage, generosity and immense talent, Sevan shows her audience the power of a solo performance to inspire minds and move hearts. Taking Flight is a significant contribution to the American theater.”
Anne García-Romero, Playwright, Professor at UCSB and Cal Arts
"It is hard not to fall under the spell of Adriana Sevan in the one hour and fifteen minutes that you sit watching her take you through a roller coaster of emotions. It is hard not to be touched by the heartfelt words and emotions crafted by this artist of events which have touched us all but which only a few gifted souls can portray so powerfully."
Bianca Bagtourian, Director of Armenian Dramatic Artist Association
