Recommended by Nick Malakhow

An amazing piece. I found myself so grateful to read a trans narrative centered around love, fellowship, friendship, and community vs. isolation and violence (while also appreciating how the characters articulated the place those things have in trans and queer experiences). All of the characters are so distinct and compelling. A subtle and nuanced piece with palpable conflict that doesn't veer into overwrought drama. I hope to see this produced soon!

What a consistently inventive, surprising, and cohesive piece. I love how history is adapted and portrayed in part one, and then refracted and exploded in the remaining two parts. Corthron navigates dramatic territory from hilarious satire to gutting, alienating truths, to fascinating imagined future with seeming ease! Hope to see this very theatrical piece produced some day soon.

So incredibly inventive and highly original. Whimsical and hilarious in the best way, while so powerful and grounded in part two. I found myself consistently and pleasantly surprised by both what was happening onstage as well as the profundity of the straightforward language. Huge themes of legacy, impact, history, access, and isolation are all explored so deftly and imaginatively here. Would love to see this highly theatrical piece onstage!

A beautiful, beautiful piece! Three amazingly drawn characters with distinct voices. I was so impressed with how vividly this town was rendered with only three characters. The dialogue was briskly moving and natural, with some beautifully lyrical moments and monologues that never felt forced or disingenuous. I was also always pleased that, just as I'd be tearing up or holding my breath, I'd be able to exhale or utter a soft chuckle at some unique and specific and utterly human moment. So happy to see productions on this play's horizon, and I hope I get to see one soon.

What a wonderful, human piece! Freni so deftly captures the rhythms and irregularities of human speech and plumbs those stilted interactions for both hilarity and pathos. Each character is multi-dimensional and unique, and I appreciate the intersectionally diverse set of identities presented. We learn about how each character is treated and viewed by society not through arduous exposition, but through simple, immediate, and nuanced conversations. This play brilliantly interrogates the purpose of support groups and the stigmas and assumptions attached to chronic illness in a way that respects each character, but also doesn't let them off the hook.

An intimate and wonderfully constructed portrait of two women. This piece navigates the territory between comedy and tragedy deftly. Betty and Annie are so richly human, and I root for them the whole time. It's wonderful to see a small piece of rural realism centered on women vs. grizzled and tortured men. What I'm most impressed with is the way in which this play captures the entrenched gender dynamics and socio-cultural atmosphere of the whole world Annie and Betty inhabit with just a few characters. Easy to see this onstage, and I hope to see it produced soon.

A beautiful piece that ranges from the everyday to the fantastical with seamless shifts. Similarly, we go from the hilarious and whimsical to the heartbreaking and gutting sometimes within a few lines. Brilliantly theatrical storytelling. The various parables and folk tales are presented in unique and fascinating ways, and are stitched together with some very satisfying framing devices. As I finished the piece, I considered cultural inheritance, collective trauma/healing, the evolution of folklore, and the responsibility/inevitability of honoring, acknowledging, and passing lessons down. I hope to see this produced soon!

This play is wonderful! I appreciate it on so many levels--as a playwright, English teacher, as someone who has directed THE CRUCIBLE (but I hope never again). The characters here are all deftly rendered, distinct, and uniquely voiced. This play had me laughing aloud for most of it, and so cathartically moved by its end. I do hope this becomes a staple to be produced in colleges. The language might scare off high school drama/English teachers, but teens should read this--perhaps in a HS unit on THE CRUCIBLE if a district chafes at performing it. Brilliant work!

What a beautiful piece! Lili is a compelling protagonist, and her journey is unique and nuanced. What I admire most about this play is how subtle the shading is for every character. The natural rhythms of speech are captured beautifully, along with thoughtful and at times lyrical monologues that don't feel forced but, rather, feel like genuine moments of revelation for the characters speaking them. Like the best plays, the specificity and richness of these characters from a world so different from my own only heightens the universality of the themes. Citizenship, belonging, betweenness/cultural liminality--so much to think about!

This is a wrenching and masterfully structured piece that illuminates violence of all kinds against women from ancient roots to modern horrors. As individual units, each act stands alone as a compelling theatrical experience. Stitched together, they all take on a new power and resonance that is painful, terrifying, prescient, and perspective shifting. The last few lines gave me chills. Wonderful use of doubling. Reading this is unique in that, as the narrative shifts backwards in time, I feel encouraged to think in the present and future--how to recognize and break cycles of oppression as they happen.