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All the Little Animals I Have Eaten
Hines is a spectacularly talented writer … a great mind, blended in with an academic’s emotional detachment and a depressive’s obsessiveness … all of it delivered in a stem-winding script. It’s a smart, funny, unforgettable journey … Hines’ wild mind shines. (Stephen Hunt, The Half-Step, Calgary)
Hines is an inimitable creator in Canadian theatre, an incredibly visual writer with a singular sense of humour that’s insightful and twisted. Alarms should go off whenever she has a new work in town, especially after the harrowing real-estate horror story of her solo show “Crawlspace.” (Carly Maga, Toronto Star - Preview)
All the Little Animals premiere by the immensely talented and equally perceptive Karen Hines … gleefully drips satire. (Louis Hobson – Calgary Herald)
Absolutely, tragically hilarious. (Vicki Trask, Onstage Calgary)
Crawlspace, 2015-19
Hines’s performance is wonderful, but the real magic here is her writing. Crawlspace is full of incredible details and observations … darkly comedic and emotionally daring. Crawlspace is resistance theatre and it’s nothing short of inspiring. (Andrea Warner, The Georgia Straight, Vancouver)
The hyperbole of this setting is perfectly matched by Hines’ careful composure as a writer. There are certainly elements of schadenfreude in the appeal of Hines’ story, but she pushes its impact beyond shock value through sheer ability and mastery of her craft. (Carly Maga, Toronto Star)
One of the ten best productions of 2015. (Globe & Mail)
Savagely funny. NNNN (Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine)
Like a Mike Holmes episode scripted by Franz Kafka. (J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe & Mail)
A wonderful piece of theatre created and delivered by a master of understatement to great effect. (Lynn Slotkin, The Slotkin Letter)
Hines’s story is about what happens when we let greed undermine decency—her character accuses herself of being credulous, but it’s much clearer that she was massively deceived… Fear not. Hines finds hilarity in darkness as surely as a pig finds truffles in the mud. (Colin Thomas)
Drama: Pilot Episode, 2012-14
Remarkable. We go from chic to cheek, from satire to melodrama, from soul of the mind to spirit in the veins… A magnificent play. (Bob Clark, Calgary Herald)
Hines is nothing if not an original – her fortes are mood and dense, destabilizing dialogue – a twisted and consistently quotable satire. (Nestruck, Globe & Mail)
Hines is superb at depicting in a few words the despair of people who feel forced to live lives bereft of meaning … I can't imagine a person in the Western world who would be left untouched by the great drama of souls Hines creates here. (Alex Rettie, Alberta Views)
Hello…Hello, 1999-2008
Exquisitely crafted … seamlessly stylish and intellectually provocative. A Cassandra that deserves to be listened to. (Kate Taylor, Globe & Mail)
Soaring satire. Hines masterfully revitalizes clichés and perks up dialogue, while also subtly borrowing from works as diverse as La Boheme and The Gift of the Magi. (Glenn Sumi - NOW)
Hines’s writing style has a seductive, lyrical quality that belies its political complexity – it’s like reading Japanese haiku and a nihilist treatise all at the same time. (Kamal Al- Solaylee, EYE)
The momentum and perspicacity of this inventive play is evident on the page. It is also obvious why Hines is lauded as one of the nation’s premier dramatists. (Ibi Kasick, Eye Weekly – Books)
The Pochsy Plays, 1992-2010
A miracle of bitter hope... Hines has tapped into the confusion and alienation unique to our age and mined a work of gossamer charm and deadly power. Pochsy is part of the light that keeps us laughing as we plunge into the darkness. Beckett … would have fallen for her. (Simon Houpt, EYE)
Karen Hines' Pochsy, the crown princess of narcissism, has become one of the little gems of Canadian theatre, an unforgettable character steeped in equal measures of honey and acid. (Robert Crew, Toronto Star)
To be in love with Pochsy, as I am, is an exquisitely perverse addiction … She's like a disease you want to get in the hopes that it will purge something bigger. (Colin Thomas, The Georgia Straight)
Hines is an astonishing artist both as a writer and a performer. Her acid meditation on our modern confusion comes via the murky labyrinth of Pochsy’s brain. You will laugh, a lot, and Pochsy will help you be dismayed by your laugh lines. (Nicholls, Edmonton Journal)
Hilarious and harrowing...A walking, singing, dancing embodiment of designer nihilism ... Her comedy has the rare ability to make you laugh while feeling queasy. (Jill Lawless, NOW)
Ingenious, acidic comedy ... a hallucinatory ultra-feminine living corpse. (Liam Lacey, The Globe & Mail)
Pure poetry spun smooth as silk. Imagine Greek Tragedy by Betty Boop. (Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette)
I laughed, I cried, I called my friends. (Minneapolis-St.Paul Pioneer Press)