Washington Post - Recommended
"...Drury can be devastatingly funny as she sends up her oversensitive theater collective - in principle a high-minded troupe, but in practice a traffic jam of competing agendas. Who's going to be the leading man? How romantically should they play scenes based on the trove of letters they've discovered from German soldiers to the folks back home? Are those letters really a good source?"
DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended
"...How far is too far? Do different rules apply when you're discussing the subject of race? Can you truly ever walk a mile in someone else's shoes? Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues to boldly push the envelope in ground-breaking theatrical development with their evocative presentation of Jackie Sibblies Drury's We Are Proud To Present... A culturally shocking and equally emotionally stunning play that begs the question of walking in the shoes of another race, culture, and heritage; this intense theatrical endeavor will strike you in a most unexpected fashion. Directed by Michael John Garces, the production is a metaplay within a developmental environment that speaks to audiences of all races, creeds, and cultures."
WeLoveDC - Recommended
"...With so many stories on stage and screen described as, “Based on real events,” We Are Proud to Present… makes us think twice about accepting the story we see in front of us as cold hard fact. Even the most amazing real-life stories are filtered through another storyteller’s view."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...Director Michael John Garces has done a very good job with Drury's ungainly script, and his actors-Andreu Honeycutt, Peter Howard, Joe Isenberg, Michael Anthony Williams, the peerless Holly Twyford, and Ursula-demonstrate utter commitment to the work."
Washington City Paper - Somewhat Recommended
"...It's a perfectly valid artistic choice, as long as you can swallow that the story of a violently subjugated and all-but-forgotten people and a wacky romp about the ego-driven sausage-making of "devised" theater are two topics that rate equal attention. In fact the show-which has already been staged at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater and New York's Soho Rep-was fully scripted. Which is to say its tedium, phoniness, and eventual recourse into desperate shock tactics are fully Drury's fault."
BrightestYoungThings - Somewhat Recommended
"...There is a reason that most theater productions begin with a script. For directors and actors, it is their bible. Everything in it is sacrosanct, more or less, and any deviation from the source material is a sin. Directors and actors are free to interpret the text and the characters, yet everyone concedes there is a basic blueprint all must follow. We Are Proud to Present…, the new dark comedy at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, is about what happens when six actors do not have a script. There is some source material – a set of letters to be exact – yet it’s not enough to sustain a performance. And since the letters are ostensibly written by a group of European soldiers who eradicate an entire tribe in Sub-Saharan Africa, their efforts reveal some brutal ugliness about America’s past."
The Georgetowner - Somewhat Recommended
"...However worked out this play was, and it was done with care, it had the look of stuff that happens every day to most of us: life and death, cab rides in which a driver offers up the notion that there may be such a thing as a coming apocalypse, the hurly burly of demographic change in this city."
MD Theatre Guide - Recommended
"...Ursula's artistic director plays protagonist with a fierce combination of grace, humor, and stubbornness. Though claiming collaborative intent, she pushes her actors into psychological terrain no one is prepared to enter, much less explore with knowledge and art. This naivete is essential to the play's believability."
DCTheatreScene - Recommended
a diverse acting company balances the relative truths of occupier and occupied in their dramatic staging of Germany’s 31-year colonization of Namibia. What starts as an insightful and even funny history experiment soon spirals into a devastating indictment of race relations that leaves the audience as quiet as a graveyard.