A repertory of surrealistic dreams unfolds with the appealing wit of their masks.
     - Jennifer Dunning, 
The New York Times

A treasure we emphatically recommend to all. With dumbfoundingly simple means they produce an ingenious mutation betwixt man and beast.
              - Mathes Rehder, 
Hamburger Abendblatt

Attending a Paper Beasts performance is like attending a three-ring circus, with an lonesco play going on in one ring, a concert in the second and a ballet in the third. They are hilariously outrageous.
                     - Steve Fagin, 
The Day, New London

It's precisely fantasy, just that mental condition in which real life objects can be transformed, hugely dilated into new possibilities. It's that unique scenic dimension where imagination lives, the overflowing apparitions which the Beasts, using dance and mime, invent and improvise with a stupefying grace, pulling forth from an imaginary bottomless well a miracle of colors and sounds, reinventing the genre of "waking dream", that sleep with the eyes opening little by little to a sight glaring with innocent irony.
                          - Antonio Sabatuoci, 
Bresciaoggi

The Beasts continue to amaze me with unending inventions of sounds, costumes, and clever devices. They discover new ways in which to keep the vital organ - the
imagination- alive.
          - Janet Saleh Dickson, 
Curator of Education,
           Yale University Art Gallery


The bravura of their mime, the originality of their masks, and the facile invention of their text bring an ancient wisdom to the (Spoleto) Festival.
       - Elianoa Pirazroli,
II Messaggero di Roma

There is an innocent and dreamlike accuracy in their superb parody. Many of their extravagant images stay with me like inscrutable but precious gifts.
                   - Burt Supree, 
The Village Voice

Pure magic.
            - Rebecca Aim, 
Swarthmore College Bulletin

Little did we know that in commissioning the Beast duo of Marya and Dan, we would set afire a frenzy of their own imaginative art-making.  The Beasts took the "making art" concept to the moon and back.
    - Julia Leamon, Williams 
College Museum of Art

Your performance of "Making Art" was a huge success.....The audience's
enthusiasm was palpable.
         - Linda Friedlander, 
Yale Center for British Art

wonderful...perfect..pure magic
               - Lynne Gray,
Whitney Museum, Stamford
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Kids, parents find Lyman Allyn arts park celebration entertaining
New London Day
By Patricia Daddona
Published on 7/2/2001

New London. A mythic toucan chirped out nonsense syllables to a group of youngsters investigating Lyman Allyn Museum of Art's new outdoor Art Park Sunday afternoon, then led them through a maze of stone.

"Everyone jump three times"; the toucan squawked when everyone reached the end of the labyrinth, and five children jumped obediently. Her tiny head and big beak loomed over a body hidden by a black nylon cape. She would later tell them to run on tiptoe, lean forward, lift their legs while walking and " walk really high".

Played by Marya Ursin of Stonington, a member of the Mystic Paper Beasts Theatre Co., the toucan and other exotic creatures in colorful masks entertained children and parents in interactive, roving improvisation as part of the museum's free celebration of its new park. Museum docents also gave tours. Other adults showed children how to color cardboard, then paint it black and scratch the dried surface to create fireworks.

"It ran fast and I like running fast", said Ryan Massey, 7, who claimed the toucan as his favorite part of the afternoon celebration. "It told us to do funny things in the maze".

Parents seemed to enjoy the activities as much as the children.

"It's fantastic", said Heather Botelle of Montville. "It's a great way of getting kids interested in coming to the museum and it's done in a very hands-on style that gets them involved."

Most children appeared timid at first around the dancing creatures, but responded to interaction, especially when it included unusual instruments, such as a wooden cylinder whose different-sized pieces  made various pitched sounds when struck with a wooden stick. Thomas Engel, 8, and his brother,  James, 11, of Waterford, liked the clicking sound and took turns making it themselves.

"It's almost like a high (pitched) drum" James Engel said.  Indoors, Ruth Sussler of New London and other museum docents gave tours whenever visitors requested them. The museum regularly provides activities like these on the first Sunday of every month,  she said. In the Hendel Library, Michelle Heineman of Waterford encouraged her daughter, Emily, 4, to finish coloring her piece of cardboard.

"It's really neat," Heineman said, naming in particular the maze and ruins in the park. "They did a nice job."