Recommended by Bill Triplett

Not with a bang, or a whimper, but with the sound of a helicopter swooping overhead: this is how the world might end. Or at least the world as we know it. Bruce Bondafede’s hand-grenade of a play envisions a future that could already be on the horizon, a time when Christian fundamentalism has seized power and is hunting down and “re-educating” (read: crucifying) all resistance. But don’t think this is a fight between simple good and evil. It’s more a look at the blurring of both sides. A tense and harrowing look. Riveting!

Good lord, this is heartbreakingly existential, a picture of a man disconnected from himself and possibly the one person who ever loved him. Our hero has gone emotionally numb, thanks to a recent traumatic brain injury, and like his memories, everything in his own home looks the same but has lost all true meaning for him. And despite his ex-lover’s attempts to reconnect him with himself, he only seems to become more isolated, remote, alienated. How does one go on? Scott Sickles has done an amazing job of making you feel the void that could trap anyone.

A sly and witty piece of meta-theater that had me laughing out loud in places. Imagine a play that takes place amid the audience, the actors sitting next to patrons, and arguing among themselves about why they won't get up onstage. Wonderful pacing that, in the hands of a good director, would make Larry Rinkel's clever script a delight to ride along with.

This short play is long on painful family history and its lingering damage. Its setting – in the heartland of America – resonates on more than one level, and the characters’ individual strengths and weaknesses are plain to see. An undercurrent of sadness runs through the piece, but Diane Hightower makes it dramatic and involving. A moving piece, and a great vehicle for three actors.

Yep, I'm another one who caught and admired this at the 2019 Midwest Dramatists Conference. Rachael Carnes has a gift for mixing quirky humor with dark themes and questions, and this is yet another triumph. Four women -- four generations -- a picnic, and what should be something of a happy occasion eventually yields a lot of pain, fear, and guilt. But who's ultimately responsible? And why are they interested in what those kids are doing nearby? A wonderfully mysterious piece that's easily staged.

Audrey Webb has written a poignant mix of elegy and drama – with the right amount of humor laced in – about a teenage boy trying to come to terms with the looming death of his cancer-stricken twin sister, who’s already accepted her fate. We watch as he tries, with her help, to work through his guilt and fear as well as a need to apologize for something he did long ago. Webb has built the kind of fragile, charged atmosphere that touches the heart. A lovely, sad piece that leads to a sense of grace.

Arguments between couples about seemingly small things are never about those things -- but about far bigger and scarier problems underneath. Problems many married people don't want to face. Bill Goodwin doesn't let his characters escape the larger, emotional storm that refuses to be contained when a tornado is forecast. And there is no shelter that can protect them from what they must face in each other. Catching this was among the highlights for me at the 2019 Midwest Dramatists Conference.

I'm a sucker for whip-smart satire, and this had me from "go" at the 2019 Midwest Dramatists Conference. A teen girl hoping to get into Smith College, an ancient warrior princess looking for her successor, a muck-encrusted sword at the bottom of a Swedish lake, and the promise of super powers (and help with the college application) -- all these wonderfully disparate elements combine in Joshua Cohen's hands and become a laugh-out-loud romp through millennial angst, contemporary society...and beyond. Wonderful!

I found myself absorbed by Philip Williams's portrait of a gay couple about to enter a retirement community. In a very short span of time he manages to convey a long history of a relationship and what keeps the two men together -- and what now challenges them both. A quietly moving piece. Even today, a few days after I saw the play presented at the 2019 Midwest Dramatists Conference, Williams's characters and their fated, poignant lives still linger in mind.

A high school English teacher and a 17-year-old girl who "admires" him a little too much for her own good. And his. Think you know what's going to happen? Maybe. Maybe not. Aleks Merilo's play -- by turns funny and discomforting -- may flirt with forbidden attraction, but issues of class as well as minds that are narrow in more ways than one are exposed as well. A real page-turner that could be very economically -- i.e., easily -- staged. And should be!