PRESS
Photo by Jenn Udoni
Lavender Men at About Face Chicago
“Guided with expertise by […] director, writer and performer Lucky Stiff, they’ve seemed to inject a transfusion of additional pluck and power into this production.” - Chicago Theater Reviews
“The fabulousness is also in the staging by Lucky Stiff, a director with a well-established drag sensibility” - Chicago Reader
“The eroticism absolutely explodes… a surreal flight of fancy that has to be experienced to be fully appreciated” - Chicago Theatre Reviews
from “Has The World Finally Caught Up With Roger Q. Mason?” By afrikah selah
“Lucky Stiff, who’s directing Lavender Men, said that Mason’s “kind of fantasia allows us to imagine a past that could lead to a parallel future in this world, the one we have to live in, where sometimes trying to make change feels like trying to shove a marshmallow through a keyhole—if failing to do that came with the possibility of disaster or death. It’s an intoxicating possibility.” While Lavender Men’s action plays out “in a cabaret of self,” Stiff said, this is no mere entertainment. Taffeta, they said, “claims her place in the historical narrative as a matter of survival.”
Photo by Evan Hanover
HUNDRED DAYS at Kokandy Productions
“Stiff’s direction is capable of holding the beautiful artistry of those mental picture moments” - Chicago Tribune
“Heartbreakingly beautiful” - Chicago Reader
“Director Lucky Stiff’s seamless guidance and empathy for their characters, coupled with the percussive, choreographed movement created by Collin Quinn Rice, add so much to this production.” - Chicago Theater Reviews
A CHRISTMAS CAROL at Goodman Theater
“The literally incandescent Ghost of Christmas Past (Lucky Stiff channeling both Diana, the moon goddess, and Pan, the half-hooved god of the wilds) flies Scrooge to formative scenes from his youth” - Chicago Sun-Times
“Lucky Stiff plays an ethereal, flying Ghost of Christmas Past, sparkling with starlight, wearing a glowing moon on their head” - New City Stage
“Lucky Stiff plays the Ghost of Christmas Past as a harlequin-like character[…] a refreshingly different take” - Third Coast Review
THE MEMORY PLACE at Pivot Arts
“One standout performance is “Jesu Maria,” named for Joan of Arc’s battle standard, by director and writer Lucky Stiff. In an emotionally generous performance as delicate and detailed as a butterfly wing, they summon an ancestral ghost with a photo transparency, resurrect their grandparents through the bodies of audience members, and perform other quiet acts of magic that build a gauzy bridge between the living and dead.” - New City Stage