Recommended by Conor McShane

A descent into the dark heart of American racism, police brutality, and the moral compromises made by those in power. Its language is so propulsive and its stage pictures so stark and frightening, pulling it along with an almost elemental power. An anguished cry of a play for our bleak current moment.

A play that manages to be a frighteningly plausible (hopefully alternate) near future story and a genuinely uplifting illustration of our collective strength through solidarity, How to Pick a Lock is a moving ode to the power of mass resistance (and the corporate co-opting thereof). I bet it would've been really cool to experience live!

A fascinating fusion of relationship drama and near-future sci-fi with a carefully observed, dreamlike tone. The play's world is thoroughly rendered but not overdone, giving us just enough to give us a strong sense of this frightening future.

A beautifully rendered, magical realist meditation on trauma, healing and connection. It breaks your heart like a conch shell and then puts it back together again.

A carefully honed, darkly funny satire touching on the legacy of white supremacy from the days of slavery to its current MAGA incarnation.

As someone who's been lucky enough to go through this whole pandemic cohabitating with a loving partner, I think this play so deftly captures the complexities of a relationship in isolation, the comfort and the monotony, the anxiety and the paradoxical feeling of spending all day with someone without feeling like you've really "seen" them. That, and the ever-shifting temporal dissonance we all experience on the daily nowadays. You don't see a ton of work that focuses on a relationship that isn't in crisis, and I really appreciated how it's depicted here.

A strange, compelling odyssey (see what I did there?) that makes rich theatrical use of both verbal and physical communication, whose allegorical implications I'm still teasing out. Much like the titular director's work, this one defies easy answers but is all the more interesting for it!

A compelling, slightly absurdist meditation on art, authorship, and authenticity. Utz manages a careful, slightly surreal tone and sustains it throughout; I loved the subtle implications of the world outside this artistic studio that are left unsettlingly ambiguous.

As a music and folklore nerd, I was blown away by Mr. Buckner's take on the tale of Robert Johnson at the crossroads, its synthesis of Igbo legend and spirituality with this modern American myth is so fascinating and well-rendered. It can be challenging (to me anyway) to write historical figures as fully-fledged dramatic characters, but this play pulls it off beautifully.

A wonderfully unsettling play that pulls off some nifty tricks with point of view and subjectivity. The device of the audience being able to understand what Calvin cannot, along with the fluid shifts in character give us a great sense of Calvin's fragile mental state. Sometimes the scariest sounds in the woods are actually inside our own heads.