←Recommendations of THIS HAPPENED ONCE AT THE ROMANCE DEPOT OFF THE 1-87 IN WESTCHESTER

Oh, I just loved this play. It's a piece that drips with collective yearning: for lost potential, for what might be, for human contact from someone fresh and new. it's a love story where no love is professed, a chronicle of life where the world changes with the seasons, a character study where the Romance Depot becomes a character in itself. The relationship between Kevin and Beth is heartbreaking and life-affirming. Femia gives us no easy outs and never sugar-coats anything, with magical stage directions and stunning use of silence and mood. What a beauty of a piece.

We produced a reading of this script for Mirrorbox Theatre's "Out the Box" series and could not recommend it more highly. While the setting might be somewhat sensational, the characters and their inner lives are so deeply human. And the monologues here, particularly the ones for Beth are grand arias that any performer would relish sinking their teeth into. Moreover, Gina was excellent to work with, and we hope to have an opportunity to collaborate again in the future.

MonologueBank is happy to recommend the writing of Gina Femia. In this play we found (at least) a couple of standout monologues from the character of BETH, who has been forced to deal with some very particular issues - both sexual and otherwise. In one she charmingly describes being set on fire by a student, and in the other she shares a difficult secret. Beth is a complicated and wonderfully realized character who perhaps has a habit of oversharing, but is all the more lovable for it. The writing is honest; the characters are relatable, and the jokes are sharp.

Oh man. I knew I was going to be in trouble with a description like "He's Kinda plain and there's nothing particularly striking (or Romantic!) about him." But oh man. I adored this play. Beth's monologue at the end (all of them really) really got me. I am so jealous of the actors that get to bring these characters to life.

Beautiful work yet again by the incomparable Gina Femia revealing the intimate truths of life one lonely heart at a time. Here is a play about connection that accrues slowly in small details until I realized I was completely invested. BRAVA!

This play was a FINALIST for the 2019-2020 In-Progress New Play Reading Series at Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. It is our pleasure to support THIS HAPPENED ONCE AT THE ROMANCE DEPOT OFF THE 1-87 IN WESTCHESTER.

Premiere Stages, the professional Equity theatre in residence at Kean University, is pleased to recognize “This Happened Once at the Romance Depot Off the I-87 in Westchester” by Gina Femia as a semifinalist for the 2019 Premiere Play Festival. “This Happened Once” rose through a competitive selection process conducted by Premiere staff and a panel of outside theatre professionals to become one of 23 semifinalists out of 659 submissions. The panel was particularly impressed by Gina’s fully realized, astonishingly complex characters and the warm, human moments of tenderness between them. Our congratulations and thanks to Gina.

Ah, this is so good! It's a genuinely moving and romantic moment of connection that's complicated and unexpected and funny/sexy but not in the way you'd think. I'd be a big cheeseball and program it for Valentine's Day even though it isn't cheesy at all.

A beautiful play that surprised me with just how much it sucked me in. I wasn't expecting to get teary in a coffee shop as I reached the end, but I did. Honest, intimate, funny, and moving...as per usual with Gina's work.

Through her dialogue and storytelling, Gina Femia weaves a world of characters that are both familiar and unique, in a location that is welcoming instead of forbidden. THIS HAPPENED gives us a glimpse into a very real, and very specific MOMENT in two strangers lives. People's desires are not what they seem, as they are reaching out for something, anything to feel. This play has the heart of a Disney movie, the characters and location of a Kevin Smith script, and the emotional ferocity of a Fiona Apple Song!