Liberty

“(George Washington) cut a dubious figure. He fell into greatness as if it were a chasm and he has suddenly found a parachute. This making of the hero least likely, Miss Sunde has captured in her play. She has also caught the mood of the revolution... She also exposes the remarkable image of a democracy fighting with men who were bound by nothing... ...a nervous amateur ... becomes the legendary figure...” Clive Barnes NEW YORK POST

“With a voice both poetic and theatrical, Karen Sunde’s plays dramatize historical epochs in epic scope, making hers a distinctive, even unique, contemporary American drama, more akin to European than to other American plays. She tackles topics of war and politics to produce usually presentational, often explosive theatre which many would swear could not have been created by a woman. Flesh and blood passions...People achieving greatly, now and then crippled by arrogance and intolerance, suffering mightily, dazzled by possibilities, devastated by disappointments yet continuing and surviving are what she dramatizes No matter how sweeping the setting and cast, she chooses personal canvases upon which to paint her funny, thrilling, searing, moving scenes, which probe the stuff of which our heroes - and by extension we ourselves - are made. In inquiring about our past, Sunde remarks upon our future. That she does so with a sure histrionic sense is a guarantee that her work will endure in the American theatre after our more commercial fare has proven ephemeral.”

Excerpt from "SUNDE" entry pp 643-45; CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS