Recommended by Daniel Prillaman

I’ve yet to use the words “Satanist coming-of-age story” in describing anything. I’m so glad I can here.

These characters are hilarious, heart-wrenching, and beautifully relatable (both in personality and unpacked religious trauma). Amid the fun is an excellent, nuanced insight into the way many branches of Christianity literally? metaphorically? demonize other human beings. We can debate the nature of evil forever, but that shit has an effect. It hurts people. It traumatizes them. And it shouldn’t be the reason found families are formed, but hey, maybe Satanism is the friends we made along the way. Tremendous.

New Year’s is a time of reflection, seasonal depression, and snogging that runs the gamut from significant to meaningless. These two forlorn souls contemplate much in the final minutes, but are they awkward people or just filling awkward silences? Or both? Delightfully melancholy with its own heartbeat. A really fun scene for two actors, this.

I have said it before and I will say it again, Samantha Marchant makes the most fun staging playgrounds. Forget living rooms, forget mansions, this farce is a literally vertical slice of life from the most trying night of Heather Balustrade's (oh yeah, get ready for some names) career. Everything you want in a farce is here in spades: mistaken identity, clothing swaps, butts. It is all colossally funny. The whole team will have a hoot with this one, which means audiences certainly will too. Personally, I'm ready to invest. I need a Commandeering Mink T-shirt. Or a hat.

If you'll pardon the pun, there's so much to dig into with this staggering play. From the vast musings of what makes a mother and parent capable of filicide (or what drives them to it), or what we owe to our own flesh and blood (especially if we envy them), O'Grady's play sets laser focus on a family unit struggling with the same questions until they become deeply personal. Too personal. A modern Greek tragedy is in play, and yet, full of life. Absolutely haunting.

Poor Sarah. This is a very fun and bloody send up of our favorite torture porn franchise. The mix of comedy and horror is perfect, and the roles would be so enjoyable for two actors to dive into. Jigsaw would be proud, especially because of that final twist.

However you encounter this script (be it the OG paper or the stellar audio productions by RubySky Productions and Gather By The Ghost Light), it is guaranteed to leave a mark on you. This is delicious, terrifying horror. Is it all in Samantha’s head? Does that matter? Clear answers are devilishly and deftly left to our own minds to supply, and none of them are good. You’ll certainly be thinking of this play next time it’s cold outside and you’re home alone. Just magnificent.

There's a lot packed into this short play, literally and subtextually. Wherever on the spectrum of platonic to romantic this relationship lies, is it safe to say it's doomed? If you can't stay still long enough to get your cast made, the larger things don't have much hope of following. There's echoes of Pinter aplenty here. Impactful scene.

The eternal question. Society has committed terrible deeds, but only if there are no librarians in the world will hope be truly lost. Allen's scene is filled with the perfect level of silliness, resulting in a fun foursome letting loose about all their relationship woes and situations. You can't go wrong here.

When we speak of theatre holding up a mirror to reality, it’s this. There’s only one real difference in play. I’m actually still a bit flabbergasted by this piece because it’s just so goddamn brilliant. The central metaphor is not only so simple and succinct, but malleable to any marginalized members of our society considered “atypical.” This is absurdity at its finest and most biting, and I will spoil nothing further, save that the only folks who might have more fun than the actors are the designers.

Spellbinding. Jamerson slowly bends time and space before weaving them both and more back into and onto themselves in a mythic and disorienting exploration of identity, human interaction, and climate change. Our world demands we “define” ourselves, and finding those words is difficult enough, but add on top of that our self-induced apocalypse? The pacing mimics our confusion and paralysis. There is so much potential for visually and audibly arresting stagecraft in this script, I can barely imagine what it would be like to experience live. I hope to one day do so. Absolutely tremendous.