Recommended by Conor McShane

  • Why Are You Like This? (The Audience Services Play)
    28 Oct. 2020
    Hoo boy, I've never worked in a call center (thankfully), but having done a number of front-of-house audience services jobs over the years, I related hard to this play. It nails the consistent indignities, baffling encounters, and strange camaraderie that these kinds of jobs create, anchored by a likable cast of characters. Now if only I could stop cringing from all the memories...
  • Stockholm Reunion
    26 Oct. 2020
    This play takes an implausible premise and spins it into a darkly funny, nerve jangling experience, exposing White Supremacy both overt and subliminal.
  • America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro
    12 Oct. 2020
    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.
  • a hit dog will holler
    11 Oct. 2020
    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.
  • No Punk On the Sabbath
    7 Oct. 2020
    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!
  • PLAINCLOTHES
    28 Sep. 2020
    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!
  • The City and The City
    26 Sep. 2020
    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!
  • (Non)Fiction
    2 Sep. 2020
    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.
  • Recent Unsettling Events
    16 Aug. 2020
    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.
  • Standoff At Hwy#37
    2 Aug. 2020
    A rich, gripping story grappling with loyalty, identity, and duty, populated with compelling characters (Darrin's a particular favorite!).

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