BROKE WIDE OPEN "New York is integral to his being: it's in his words, his writing, his thoughts, the way he walks, talks, even breathes... With an electrifying stage presence and a grace that escapes many a seasoned Broadway performer, he tells of his life search for identity and home simply and eloquently. Like the piece of scaffolding he pushes, climbs on, and spins, he builds his life up only to have it tumble back down. Then he simply picks up the pieces and builds again, each time searching, hoping, and experiencing life with a resilient bravura. Ever-changing, ever-building, ever-reaching. That's scaffolding. That's New York. That's Rock Wilk in Broke Wide Open."- Lisa Bernier, Huffington Post
"High energy, honest, and unforgettable, BROKE WIDE OPEN is a poetic and orchestral unveiling of truth with Rock WILK as both maestro and menace. In BROKE WIDE OPEN, Rock WILK, fostered three times and finally adopted as a baby, takes us on a journey where he recounts and relives life changing consequences and decisions. Like martyr, like savior, like rebel without pause, Rock WILK is insistently fighting to enlighten and protect anyone and everyone in his path. A force, a hurricane, a cyclone of well intentioned chaos, Rock WILK is a tempest of love; he is valor and destruction all wrapped up into one. Testing the limits of every relationship in his life, Rock WILK’s journey to explore cause, and find home, becomes both incessant and reluctant. Emotionally gripping and spiritually giving, BROKE WIDE OPEN is also hopeful with pockets of laugh out-loud, comedic revelation. Rock WILK’s transgressions and triumphs throughout BROKE WIDE OPEN inspire unsolicited introspection; like a mirror and milestone, this theater piece compels many to face themselves and transcend to that which they are open and willing."- Ebony Brown, Style Redefine Magazine
"BROKE WIDE OPEN might just be that WHOLE NEW THING we didn’t even know we were looking for; that place we’re being drawn to for the first time as things warp and splinter, as our notions of how anything at all is CONCEIVED or CREATED (or delivered, distributed, owned and consumed) gasp their last, and we try to figure out WHAT JUST HAPPENED and WHAT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO DO NEXT, and wonder just WHAT or WHO is going to come along and make perfect sense of (and in) this new context."- Tom Chesek,
Asbury Park Press
These words below to close the year, from Rock Wilk, whose poetry is like Spike Lee's most unadorned and most beautiful musical score (by his father, Bill Lee) in "She's Gotta Have It", spun by Earl Monroe (or, Black Jesus be praised, better yet by Earl Manigault or the teenage Lloyd Daniels), observed across a Whitmanesque canvas in the manner of Alfred Kazin in "A Walker in the City", but perhaps through the eyes of a Michael Harrington or a Dorothy Day, or as if Billy Crystal had lovingly remembered his 700 Sundays down to one, on the graciously compulsive roundtrips between Coney Island and Bedford Park on the D train through which a New York poetry for the ages can be born. But don't take my word for it, go see Rock Wilk. "Sometimes keeping your options open is a good way of avoiding committing to that which could provide you with unlimited possibilities, which might just be your best option, and don't you deserve that kind of grand opportunity? Get in there and be brave enough to build." - Thomas Rome
