Recommended by Nick Malakhow

I appreciated the way that this story explored the very specific ways struggles with miscarriage, pregnancy, and fertility, can impact a whole constellation of people connected to the unborn/stillborn child. All of the characters are plausibly written and I feel for them and understand their actions, even when they are truly hurting one another. I also appreciated the messy, realistic ending that provided not a map for moving forward, but at least possibility and hope that relationships could realign and restructure in healthy ways for all involved.

An expansive, wrenching, creative piece that incorporates poetry, rap, song, naturalism, and plenty of room for creative movement direction. Eric Serrano's exploration of identity, masculinity, and both living out and breaking cycles of inherited family trauma is so thoroughly explored with a nuanced hand. The themes combined with the heightened language and song that punctuates naturalistic scenes echoes the theatricality and structure of classical tragedies while presenting us with an innovative new form entirely. The text is so strong, but this begs to be staged (inventively!), and I look forward to keeping track of this piece's trajectory.

An expansive, exquisite piece that explores how masculinity both thrives from and perpetuates loneliness, alienation, and violence. The juxtaposition of college wrestling with real-life war is beautifully nuanced and filtered through both Karina's storytelling to the audience and Bradford's humanities class interjections. King looks at an intersectionally rich swath of people and succeeds in addressing the ways masculinity interacts with so many different parts of a person's identity. Simultaneously microscopically focused and very human, while also being profound and far-reaching. The combination of lyricism, movement, sport, and intimate naturalism creates an eclectic aesthetically fascinating whole!

Whew! An entirely human, unsettling, and profound piece. A couple of presumptions I make as a liberal reader/writer/human is that (1) conservatism feels like it is unified around hatred of perceived threats to power and (2) that liberal movements cannibalize themselves with fractious opinions. Here Will Arbery so fully and humanely illustrates a microcosm of intra-movement tensions within various swaths of conservative populations, capturing these humans' fear, pride, anger, hubris, and sadness. So very much an illuminating piece of the exact moment and one that looks ahead to forboding times that need to confronted and disrupted now.

An exquisite piece! It is full of everyday poetry--both beautifully natural speech and spare lyricism. I loved the use of distance and proximity to explore relationships, and just like her dialogue, Mohlman's staging combines high theatricality (with wonderful potential for movement and design) with really intimately and specifically drawn scenes. The nuanced queer identities on display here provide some much needed representation that I wholeheartedly appreciated and felt kinship with. The folding in of faith into these character's intersectional identities was impactful as well. I hope to see this piece onstage in the near future!

What an exquisite play that will haunt me for quite some time! The economy of language is just so incredible. Huang's dialogue is lyrical, yet straightforward; everyday and profound all at once. The symmetry and recurring themes, characters, and concepts between each scene is all just so brilliantly put together. Its grounding in three time periods allows Huang to create very distinct moments and characters while also expansively exploring immigration, existential concerns about the future, family, identity, race, and so much more. I'd love to see this vivid theatrical world rendered onstage.

I loved the steady, propulsive progression of this piece from intersectionally-engaged ensemble drama to heightened political comedy to bombastic, unsettling, theatrical tragi-satire. Each of these characters was a totally recognizable human being and together they created a microcosm of queer culture that explored deep fractions and divisions within communities that should, ostensibly, be affinity spaces. While McCarthy utilizes some of the overall idea of "Boys in the Band" as a starting place, they subvert and reinvent that narrative into an affecting, contemporary, urgent new whole. I also loved the chronologically shifting interludes which helped load the present-day events.

This highly theatrical, open, and honest piece was a delight to read. It beautifully incorporates sharp satire and coming-of-age tropes into an eclectic and chaotically-coherent aesthetic. Kim so specifically and, with the keenest intersectional eye, explores the complexities of growing up and then being an adult as a multi-racial Asian-American gay man. At the same time, his story felt so relatable to anyone living in interlocking Venn diagrams of frequently marginalized identities. He tackles internalized and externalized racism and homophobia and how they intersect with desire, family--found and blood, and manages to end it all with hope. Gorgeous, hilarious!

It's hard to find good theatrical horror, and this piece delivers in atmosphere and visuals! I loved the potential for creative design elements and movement coordination/choreography. I also enjoyed how the story was simultaneously a straightforward ghost story and an extended metaphor for this couple's tensions and disintegrating relationship.

A clever and fast-paced satire that explores the intersection between sensationalism, media, politics, power structures of all kinds, and the movie industry. Gill looks at American interventionism in foreign affairs in a multi-faceted manner that packages the narrative in an entertaining and witty wrapping with vividly rendered characters. I loved how the shifting alliances and power dynamics of Alisa and Magda's story served as a microcosm for geopolitical overreach. I also appreciated the quick scenes which seemed to intentionally straddle the line between the theatrical and cinematic.