Recommended by Paul Donnelly

This is a moving meditation on the fire of the human spirit and on what is lost when that fire is banked. The oppressive weight of the expectations, the comfort of others bears down on the speaker with nullifying force. The subtle build of the piece is a part of its great power.

What fun! Poor Simon is so locked in his obsession that he misses the obvious in this funny fish out of water (almost) meets mythical creature farce.

This is a play with a broad historical sweep and a solid emotional core. There is reason to hope that Jonna and Jack will fill the intentionally blank page in their historical record with a fulfilling life together.

Oh Emily, I too am powerless over candy corn! There's so much that resonates in this charming paean to fall and its centerpiece, Halloween. It offers a lovely sensory evocation of the season and lovely nostalgia for the season of our youth.

What fun! A poor beleaguered visitor, in desperate need of a toilet, encounters a well-meaning but profoundly unhelpful guide. As the guide rambles and the visitor's urgency builds the humor escalates to a lovely final twist.

Well I sure didn't see that coming. It's clear from the get go that Olive has unique intimacy issues, but just how unique comes as quite a surprise. She is wittily revealed to be the true queen of the bad first date.

A heady mixture of horror and comedy permeates this play. The set up is amusing and the repetitions engaging and full of surprises (little Bobby was an especial favorite). It all builds to a chilling crescendo that is shocking, yet tantalizingly unresolved.

A lovely play about the search for hope in the face of severe depression. Cal and Em have such a credible rooted friendship that the bit of hope that emerges feels earned and viable.

The horrible logic of Scrivener's explanation of its podcast creation and naming paradigms is full of irony and is amusing, but its answer to the question of why it writes poetry is just plain chilling.

A horrifying vision of the reduction of poetry to a mechanical product removed from human creativity. The mundane workplace banter of the Drones and Manager only heightens the sense of despair about the enterprise. And the quotes from Yeats add heft and poignancy to the sense of all that has been lost in this all too credible future.