Recommended by Ian Thal

Andrew Clarke's script is a witty farce of academia that satirizes the recent tendency in the humanities to pursue connections with the pop-culture industry for dollars and seeming relevance (much as the sciences pursue corporate and government funding). Given the way some academic theater departments have sought to cozy up with the film, television, and video game industry in recent years, is Clarke biting the hand that feeds him? Maybe, but any satirist worthy of the name is going to bite a few hands.

I reviewed CentaStage's production of the 2015 premiere:

http://artsfuse.org/134077/fuse...

Laufer's sophisticated script addresses the ethical conflict between the legal principle of informed consent of the title and the utopian dreams of "big data" saving lives generations down the line. Laufer does not stack the deck: the betrayal of trust is tangible but even audiences will leave understanding the motives behind the betrayal. It's also a nuanced meditation on narrative: the history encoded in our DNA, legends that bind a people, children's books, and memories that can be stolen by dementia.

I reviewed the 2017 production by Apollinaire Theatre Company:

http://artsfuse.org...

It would be easy for a full-length play composed of vignettes, beginning and ending much the same way, with commuters boarding and exiting a train, to seem repetitive, but Willis stretches the format as far as it can go, embracing every genre. One of the play's strengths is just how assertively hyper-local it is to the D.C. metropolitan area -- there is no attempt to make it a generic "Big City™" -- but any rider of public transit in any city will relate.

I reviewed Pinky Swear Production's 2018 staging:

https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2018/04/15/review-use-all-available-door…...

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's "410[GONE]" is a post-modern melding of Buddhist philosophy, Chinese mythology, digital-pop-culture, clowning, and family tragedy provides a genre-bending thrill ride that generates both laughter and the contemplation on mortality and loss.

I reviewed the 2018 Rorschach Theatre production:

https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2018/03/28/review-410-gone-at-rorschach-…

Seinuk knows her mythology, and drawing upon not just Genesis but also Greek and Norse mythology. Her allusions to and repetitions of mythological violence elevates Eyes Shut. Door Open. above the popular plot formula of dark domestic secrets revealed at a family reunion.

I reviewed the 2015 production by Wax Wings Productions for The Arts Fuse. The full review can be read here:

http://artsfuse.org/132576/fuse-theater-review-eyes-shut-door-open-cain…

ALLEGRA GRAY treats the protagonist's decision to either keep or abort a pregnancy as a very personal drama: As a local celebrity, she is forced not only consider how her decision will affect her family, but her career, and ability to live in her city, as she becomes the target both of well-wishers and advocacy groups unafraid to engage in public shaming. Wyndham's play avoids simple moralizing, rather dealing with how individuals must navigate the myriad balance ethical demands they can only face on their own.

Speaking as a long-time denizen of LambdaMOO (though my time began a few years after the events of 1993), I find that "If You Can Get To Buffalo" captures the creative approaches to identity (and in many cases, ethics) that marked the milieu -- as well as the trouble that people had articulating just what life was like in this new frontier -- not just to those for whom the internet was still unexplored, but even to those who were experiencing it daily.

From the Deep manages to be psychologically realistic despite being set in a rule-bound imaginary space. Seinuk deftly acknowledges the political and social realities off-stage without taking the focus off of the struggle that Ilan and Andrew face as they attempt to maintain their sanity.

I reviewed its first full production by Boston Public Works in 2015. My review can be found here:

http://artsfuse.org/124741/fuse-theater-review-from-the-deep-real-pain-…

"Burning Up The Dictionary" very cleverly tells its story of a couple negotiating the intimacy of their private language after their break-up. Particularly smart is the final scene actually forces the audience to question whether they may need to reevaluate their understanding of what had been said and done; it's not a plot twist, so much as a semantic twist.

I attended both a reading of some early excerpts in 2011 at the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston's Playwrights Open Mic and the premiere by Vagabond Theatre Group in 2012.