Recommended by Ian Thal

A dark apocalyptic comedy about environmental destruction our species cannot afford, that might very well be impossible to stage because of the fourth-wall-breaking destruction most theaters cannot afford to simulate. It's exciting just imagining how it could possibly be done according to Daly's specifications!

A myth about the invention of the kiss by our early human ancestors. It is about those most visceral of human needs, and the most visceral ways of fulfilling them: hunger, sex, aggression, violence, bloodshed, sharing, tenderness. There are so many possibilities for staging: Physical theater styles as clowning or mime, puppetry, a cantastoria with narration, even animation, that a festival of disparate stagings is imaginable.

In "Rat Bastards (Tutti Stronzi)" Pearlstein skillfully uses the elements of commedia dell'arte: Scheming, disguises, deception, romantic love, and an intricate clockwork plot, to deliver not just a vehicle for slapstick comedy and bawdy and blasphemous humor, but a satire on xenophobia, political corruption, class disparity, conspiracy theorizing, medical quackery, and how religious intolerance can fester in even the most cosmopolitan settings. Though set in 1630, it was politically and socially relevant when Pearlstein wrote it, and continues to be relevant when I read it in 2020!

Having busked as a mime, I can say that Hansen well-captures that absurd desperation that sets in with the uncertainty of whether the audience has the understanding or attention-span for one's chosen art form -- made even more extreme when the audience has disappeared from the venues (in this case, public spaces like the street). The stage directions show an appreciation for the mime idiom and leave room for a skilled performer's own inventiveness.

Great potential for inventive physical theater or puppetry -- exemplified by the line, "the rest of you that isn’t a hand doesn’t look like a hand" -- but it would be spoilers to say who says it!

In Timbuktu, B.E. Turner's language, imagery, and sequences of action are wonderfully playful and draw our attention to the usually unexamined conventions of dining in a restaurant and of going to the theater. By breaking so many of the rules and rituals we take for granted we see just how arbitrary they really are. It's hilarious!

Hell is a bureaucracy with corrupt managers, long lines, and under-appreciated clerical staff.

Wonderfully surreal comedy featuring anthropomorphic snakes, rendering their reptilian psychology and physiology into dialogue and stage directions. The fun comes from finding the metaphors for the human experience.

The absurd is political in this satire on misogyny. Despite serious subject matter, Susan Hansell playfully uses physical theater, onomatopoeia, and visual puns to cleverly get her points across while prompting some uncomfortable laughs.

A dark feminist-existential comedy about authoritarianism, and the commodification of sex, and lallygagging as resistance. De Savigné has a fiercely ribald wit and knows how to read a map!