PRESS
Who’s Dead McCarthy? Stories by Kevin Barry –Word for Word, 2024
Nominated for a 2024 Bay Area Critics Circle Award for performance in Kevin Barry stories
“In the second story of the trio, The Wintersongs, a garrulous old lady on a train (Stephanie Hunt, funny, a little frightening, absolutely terrific) talks nonstop to her seatmate, a reluctant teenager” – Jean Schiffman, Bay City News, July 1, 2024
“In The Wintersongs, a sweaty old woman on a train (rubber-faced, brilliant Stephanie Hunt) spews a fire hose of horrors at her captive seat mate, 17-year-old Sarah.”—Mary Lou Herlihy, Theatrius, July 2, 2024
Silence by Colm Toibin – Word for Word, 2016
“I thought the lead actress in Silence [Stephanie Hunt] was magnificent” —novelist Michael Ondaatje, email to Word for Word
“An excellent Stephanie Hunt anchors the piece, exploiting Tóibín’s every minute description of Lady Gregory’s use of her eyes to communicate through glances, gazes and glares.” —Robert Hurwitt, SF Gate, Feb 22, 2016
“Stephanie Hunt beautifully captures all the subtleties — the pain, the yearning and the humor — in Tóibín’s writing.” – Jean Schiffman, SF Examiner
“As played by Stephanie Hunt, Lady Gregory has a vibrant interior life, even as she maintains a placid exterior.”— Chad Jones, Theater Dogs, February 28
More Stories by Tobias Wolff—Word for Word, 2008
“In the beguiling Sanity, the focus is on the relationship between . . . teenage April, captivatingly uncomfortable in her body, and Stephanie Hunt as her wonderfully confident, classy and sexually frank stepmother.” — Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
Fall River Axe Murders by Angela Carter—Word for Word 2003
“. . . the brilliant performance of longtime Word mainstay Stephanie Hunt as Lizzie.”
— Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
“Stephanie Hunt also does brilliant work as Lizzie herself, living in ‘the thin condition of New England spinsterhood’ — more than 30-years-old but still under her father’s roof. Hunt has an expressively mad way of staring out from behind her frizzy, disheveled hair.”— Michael Scott Moore, SF Weekly
Oil! by Upton Sinclair—Word for Word, 2001
“Hunt does brilliant work as not just the Speedometer but also a yucca, a wild rose, the speed cop, and a swiveling restaurant door.“— Michael Scott Moore, SF Weekly
“Hunt is awesome in one mercurial shift after another: As an ebulliently proud horse (as in horsepower) or embarrassed eucalyptus; a crafty-smug country judge or a waitress overcoming her astonishment at a large tip; a poor roadside waif or a burly motorcycle cop silently chewing out another motorist.”— Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle for Word for Word’s Oil!, 2001
Friend of my Youth by Alice Munro—Word for Word, 1999
“Stephanie Hunt adds hilarious townswoman sourness and disapproval, in cat’s-eye glasses, as Cleta Stapleton.”— Michael Scott Moore, SF Weekly
“Stephanie Hunt plays a town gossip with a telephone gripped in her hand like a weapon.”
— Steven Winn, SF Chronicle
A Place with the Pigs by Athol Fugard—Word for Word,1995
“Stephanie Hunt, as his practical, unimaginative wife, is wonderful, as always, at showing the spark of wit, of rebelliousness, under a plain-as-dirt exterior.” — Judith Green, San Jose Mercury News
“Stephanie Hunt is his perfect foil, endowing Praskovya with an endearingly buoyant optimism that makes her utter disregard for the agonies of the soul both funny and refreshing.”
— Mari Coates, SF Weekly
“As his long-suffering wife, Stephanie Hunt is a study in anguish. Moved by pity and love, she watches in horror as her husband devolves into an unkind stranger prone to acts in inexplicable rage. Every year of patient martyrdom is played out on her expressive face. Her every twitch, nod, and shudder are designed to appease. Hunt artfully strikes a balance between Praskovya’s steadfast strength and her raw weakness. Her immaculate accent and exact physical bearing make for an eerily truthful performance.”— Karen D’Souza, Hayward Daily Review
A Man’s a Man by Bertolt Brecht—Encore Theatre, 1994
“Hunt’s portrayal of Begbick and her two daughters flirting with Bloody Five is sublime, her gloved hands batting eyelashes and pursing her finger-lips as the younger camp followers.”— Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
The Lady Upstairs by Sara Felder
“With the superb Stephanie Hunt, the solid C.W. Morgan, and the always sensational Jane Angeles, under the deft direction of Mary Forcade, Felder’s play comes to theatrical life.”
—Noreen Barnes, Bay Area Reporter for the Intersection-for-the-Arts’ The Lady Upstairs, 1992
“It’s daring theater that succeeds with the aid of Mary Forcade’s assured staging and the actor’s terrific performances.”
—Elliott Smith, S.F. Bay Guardian for Intersection-for-the-Arts’ The Lady Upstairs, 1992
Hunger by Peter Mattei, Magic Theater “. . . some wonderful acting, particularly Stephanie Hunt as Angela and Rod Gnapp as her blue-collar beau of sorts, Bill. Both are a delight to watch perform.”
— Noreen Barnes, Bay Area Reporter for Magic Theatre’s Hunger, 1991
East by Steven Berkoff* “The production, which originated in San Francisco, was directed by Paul Hellyer and it couldn’t be stronger. Unusually convincing when assuming English accents, all five cast members deliver the caterwauling dialect with the fluency and ease of born Londoners.”
— Stephen Holden, NY Times for Industrial Strength’s production of East, 1991
*Bay Area Critics’ Circle Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for East—1991
Representative Reviews: Directing
Directing All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones, Word for Word, 2016-2017
“Through creative staging by deft director Stephanie Hunt, The Young Man traverses Washington’s Shaw neighborhood, in his Ford and on foot. . . . All Aunt Hagar’s Children is a must-see this season on any night.” —Daniel Lilly, Theatrius, November 23, 2016
“Impressive cast brings short story to vivid life….Bay Area theater: Please produce more plays like All Aunt Hagar’s Children…”—Lily Janiak, SF Chronicle
“What you remember from Word for Word’s production of All Aunt Hagar’s Children…are the women. Such women.”—Chad Jones, writing for Theatre Dogs
https://theatrius.com/2016/11/23/edward-p-jones-bridges-race-time-at-word-for-word-s-f/
Angel Face by Cornell Woolrich
“Director Stephanie Hunt makes some very savvy choices that help bring the story to life. Faced with Woolrich’s metaphor-rich narrative and dialogue, she eschews Word’s frequent practice of playfully acting out a story’s colorful turns of phrase. Instead, she lets the language create its own play of images, enhancing the action with period sound and visual effects.[There is] a great deal to enjoy in Woolrich’s intriguing suspense story, Hunt’s more ingenious directorial choices and the work of the fine-tuned ensemble.”— Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle for Word for Word’s Angel Face, 2007
Lady’s Dream and Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff*
“. . . another woman’s remembrances of a love misplaced and the grisly death of a critic are all beautifully brought to life in Word for Word’s Stories by Tobias Wolff at the Magic Theatre. It isn’t just that Wolff’s stories are such compact delights nor that the company brings them to the stage with its typically inventive skill. It’s the near perfect fit of form, content, skill and sensibility that makes for theatrical magic.
Hunt stages the piece [Bullet in the Brain] with wonderfully inventive touches as the story leaps from a mundane wait in a bank to the wildly funny drama of a robbery and on into the biology of Harloe’s determined bullet’s progress through a brain and the life scenes that do and do not flash before the dying critic’s eyes. As brightly rewarding as the first two stories are, “Bullet” shoots “Stories” to exhilarating heights.”
— Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle for Word for Word’s Stories by Tobias Wolff, 2002
*Stories by Tobias Wolff was extended for two months beyond its original run at the Magic Theater, and was named one of the “10 Best Productions in the Bay Area for 2002” by the SF ChronicleNaked Moon by Domenic Stansberry
Directed Staged Reading of noir thriller
“Later, with author Domenic Stansberry watching from the back, San Francisco performing arts company Word for Word came forward to do a staged reading of selected excerpts of Stansberry’s latest novel, Naked Moon. Word for Word gained fame doing performances of short stories by Tobias Wolff and others, not ‘dramatizing,’ not abridging, but performing every word the author had written. Their performance of Stansberry’s already lyrical work was nuanced and layered.”
— Mark Coggins, Huffington Post Review of Naked Moon presented by Subterranean SF (City Lights Books), Word for Word, and Litquake, 2010