Recommended by Conor McShane

A delightfully freaky short play with a fun, righteous twist that feels like something dreamed up on Tales From the Crypt!

This play starts with the cognitive dissonance that can happen when a loved one suddenly finds a new faith, spinning it into something tense, funny, and delightfully strange. I loved the big swing at the end!

Wow. A deeply chilling, occasionally queasily funny satire that uses the revisionist rhetoric of past racist works like Song of the South to present a disturbing future where history is distorted to fit a white supremacist narrative (more than it already is). Made even more chilling in the wake of our president's recent pledge to teach "American Exceptionalism" and label antiracist education as "Anti-American." Just stunning.

It's official (according to me): Inda Craig-Galván is one of the best playwrights working today. In this play, she tackles thorny issues of activism, authenticity, and deftly employs magical realism to dramatize the fear that Black people feel stepping out their front door into a hostile world every day. That she does this with a sharp and often funny hand is the icing on the cake. Oh, and she makes her scripts compelling reads too. I'm a big fan, is what I'm saying.

A fascinating play that recontextualizes the first "talking picture" The Jazz Singer (and the moral panic surrounding it) to tell a story about tradition vs. evolution, family love, and punk rock in New York City circa 1976. I appreciated how it leaves so much up to the production to figure out how the music should sound, giving stylistic examples but allowing the company to interpret the directions. I'd love to see this onstage!

A hilarious, devastating, electrifying play that wades into the murky waters of loyalty, tribalism, and the special bonds people make working crappy jobs. Davis crafts such a likable and believable group of teammates with a finely tuned ear for the way coworkers interact, and how corporate management pits workers against each other. I laughed out loud just reading it, I can imagine it's even more potent onstage!

This adaptation does a great job making China Miéville's fantastical narrative digestible and compelling in a dramatic form, while also crafting a generally fun noirish mystery plot with a dash of Orwellian doublethink. I would've loved to have seen this one onstage!

Jillian writes such funny, vivid characters that you're immediately invested in them. Stephanie and Mike are such a strong couple to root for that when the other shoe drops, it's devastating.

A compelling, thorny play that exists at the intersections of race, privilege, power, and protest, not offering easy answers but all the more effective for that. It feels both skeptical of social movements' ability to enact sweeping change against entrenched power structures, but also suggests that such action is necessary, even if ultimately change is piecemeal and slow. A play that's only become more relevant in recent months as demands for systemic change have grown louder.

A rich, gripping story grappling with loyalty, identity, and duty, populated with compelling characters (Darrin's a particular favorite!).