Recommended by Daniel Prillaman

Not just deftly dropping an insanely good title, Kantor brings what might be the only lycanthropy-positive story I've ever seen. It's delicious (heh heh heh). Jess and Bex's conversation while waiting for test results gives us a feast (I'll stop) of insight into the simmering rage and exhaustion that comes from living under patriarchal "feminine" standards. It's funny, smart, and just the perfect amount of cathartic. I'll never think about ice cream the same way again.

The best horror knows how much to give us, and how much to let our imaginations do the work. Marchant's monologue nails it. Scary, funny, completely innocent! Maybe. Is it innocent? It could be. But the more you think about it, maybe not. It depends on your state of mind. That's a long line of shoes, come to think of it. Oh god.

Brilliant.

Why do we have children? For their sake? Or our own? Cross' beautiful, lyrical play is an astonishing short fable that probes into familial love, rejection, and what happens when our children turn out to be their own people. The language is delicate and cool like the sheen of the moon, but as dense as the forest. The central struggle of LostMother to accept this unexpected child is treated tenderly and can be played any number of ways (although the loud vitriol against our LGBTQ+ community comes to mind at the forefront). Highly recommend. I should go call my mom.

Soucy isn't kidding. Nyalathotep is surprisingly approachable. Quite sensible, really. The conversation that ensues pulls us in with a juxtaposed charisma before it effortlessly and matter-of-factly proceeds to break our minds, in proper cosmic horror fashion. Is humanity futile? Does our need to attach meaning or make life make sense render us fools? Or admirable warriors? If we entertain Elder Gods to any such degree, maybe there is something fascinating going on, if only we can figure out how to get out of our own heads a bit. A thought-provoking rumination on meaning, existence, and change...

There's a (newer?) word, sonder. It means a sudden realization that everyone around us, down to the random pedestrians we pass on the street, is living a vast life, just as full of the complexities and layers and traumas that make up our own. Lucky enough to watch Gatton's beautiful script, that's the word I kept coming back to. Sometimes we don't wake up to the infinities inside others (or ourselves) until something terrible reminds us we're all human, and that we don't know when we might suddenly cease. A tremendous play full of nightmares, hilarity, hope, breath, and blood.

Kirkman refers to her play as a tool. As a tool, it is a blueprint for a story that no matter how you stage it (and you could in MANY ways, this is an enthralling playground) comes back to one question, "would you take pain if it meant your neighbor took less?" The journey is a funny, disturbing character study with echoes of morality and ethics that rival "The Good Place," but replaces its zaniness with a wry, claustrophobic terror. A deeply unsettling ending puts everything that came before into perspective, and I can't wait to keep "digesting" it.

Humanity has a knack for putting a unique balance of beauty and ugliness into the world. Corona's sharp, brisk thriller is nothing short of a stunning portrait of this. As a series of bizarre murders rocks the town of the protagonists, "Spotting Thermals" poetically submerges itself in (or ascends into?) the murkiness of mental health, delusion, hope, maladaptive coping, and everything in-between. It's a fantastic change of pace to see a play tap from the world of crime procedurals, and the complex web of characters is deftly drawn and richly realized. Hell of a play.

Bear with me, but I feel a "O.O" is appropriate here. A stellar short piece that understands how to let the audience do the work, Kahng's play is just absolutely terrifying. Sometimes, the horror of the horror diner isn't the establishment itself, sometimes...it's the people we meet inside them, and our own pasts. I would say more, but I don't want to spoil it. Just check it out.

Move over, Ionesco. Weaver builds a whole history here, we just only get to see a small part of it. The physical comedy part. Well...actually, like Esther...we also just missed it.

Masterfully done. Simple, beautiful, innocent, heart-wrenching, I don’t think I have to tell anybody at this point just how fucking good Scott Sickles is, but I’ll say it again. “Scott Sickles is so fucking good.” He is an amazing playwright, always knowing how much to say, and how much to leave unsaid. He trusts the audience, and in the case of this chapter of Beauregard and Zeke, weaves a tender tale of love through the generations. We’ve sadly still far to go, but we have also come so far.