Recommended by Nick Malakhow

What a fantastic piece! A beautifully executed coming of age that brings a level of nuance, specificity, and inclusivity to the genre that is rare to see. It manages to represent and honor the complexity of Cal's identity while exploring hugely universal themes of belonging, liminality, and many other topics. Simowitz has crafted a distinctly theatrical world here that crackles (sparks?) with love, yearning, and energy, that toys with the idea of how we communicate and misunderstand one another, and that makes visible the invisible experiences and challenges of Deaf individuals, and the multiplicity of experiences within deaf communities.

I had the pleasure of reading this script when purchasing perusals for plays to direct in middle school. This is an awesome, socially conscious, and clever adaptation of the source material! In fact, it's my favorite theatrical JUNGLE BOOK I've read. It is peppered with humor throughout, a propulsive poetry, and vivid characters. The animals' trip to the shallow and materialistic world of the humans adds a fun contempo-anachronistic twist that remains clever rather than gimmicky. I'll definitely be revisiting this when I have the right cast, and I strongly encourage theater educators to take a look!

An original, surprising, and nuanced play that puts onstage a boldly theatrical yet intimate world. It's amazing to see young black teens rendered so beautifully and with the complexity, intelligence, and honored desires that these characters have. The dialogue is masterfully observed and each distinct and uniquely-voiced character speaks with the irregular rhythms of natural speech. The piece warms up with skillfully-drawn humor and turns menacing quickly. The disturbing, garbled sound/light interludes punctuate the escalating tension and consistently remind us subtly yet directly of the institutionalized structures, entrenched racism, and the insidious, at-best-indifferent-at-worst-toxic authority figures that poison our society.

A beautifully rendered coming of age story that centers around Jahaan, a vividly-realized character. In fact, all six characters are written as distinct, complex voices and are written with a great deal of care and tenderness for them. Johnson effortlessly slips between the irregular and beautifully captured rhythms of day-to-day speech and a world of heightened poetry--the beauty in both worlds is rich. I also appreciated how, through the dialogue, Johnson captured such a clear sense of place--the sights, sounds, and humidity of this world. This story is so intimately captured and profound in scope. Gorgeously done!

Beautiful, exquisite, profound! I was bowled over by this piece and the opportunity to get to know these four loveable, flawed, and so tenderly-rendered humans. The exciting theatricality--shifting through time, the movement sequences, poignant and punctuating moments of magic--is balanced so adeptly with incredibly well-observed and human dialogue. I especially enjoyed the nuanced and complex treatment of huge topics that are written here with such a fine-tuned instrument--addiction, identity, love, gender, race. The portrayal of Eddie's struggles with addiction, in particular, floored me with its honesty, warmth, and delicacy. I sincerely hope to see this powerful play onstage soon!

Beautiful! The dialogue vibrates with an everyday poetry that somehow feels completely natural, while also heightening and theatricalizing the human, humorous conversations we are privy to. Lazarus plumbs this small and nuanced story to thoroughly explore grief, relationships, regret, family, moving on, and many other parallel issues. The subtle turns and revelations are surprising, never ham-handed, and kept me engaged start to finish. The characters are rendered with care and love, and the end feels cathartic and as if something seismic has shifted without resorting to contrived theatrics. Adelina, Kaila, and Carson's scene near the end was exquisite.

Brilliant theatrical sci-fi! Good science fiction takes the issues of the society from which it's born and refracts them back with a fantastical lens, and "Repossessed" does just that. The memory and persona altering technology employed in this play provides an elegant, straightforward, and yet complex metaphor for the ways we change ourselves to appease partners and friends, the ways we change and adapt as adults to further our own goals, and the tensions and interactions between those two tendencies. All of the characters are vividly rendered and Gretchen's journey, particularly, is compelling and surprising start to finish.

A potent and powerful exploration of violence in schools and America, and on the capitalization/commodification of fear and anxiety to further an agenda. Eric Reyes Loo has four richly unique and well-rendered teenage characters who are contrasted perfectly by a rotating carousel of misguided and unfortunate adults. Vacillating between sharp satire, horrifying and lyrical choral reading/staging, and nuanced and complex moments of human connection between these suffering young people, "This Is Only a Test" addresses American gun violence in a truly theatrical and innovative way. Glad to see this is getting a production in 2021.

What a beautiful solo piece that elegantly uses cartography for its metaphorical connection to identity. Roa explores betweenness in all sorts of ways here, examining the ways that intersectional identity can make one feel like an outsider within a variety of communities. I also appreciated how, on the flipside, they illustrated how such liminality can also be a super power as well. There is a lot of room here for flexible and intriguing design elements as well--I'd love to see this performed!

What a spectacular piece that navigates a tightrope walk between comedy, drama, and fantasy in a deft way that feels complex, eclectic and yet cohesive and aesthetically unified. The larger narrative of family trauma, abuse, healing, patriarchal structures, and toxic masculinity definitely feels universal and troublingly relevant. At the same time, the characters' social, political, and cultural context is so specific it adds numerous nuances and complexities to the larger themes addressed. It feels brilliantly theatrical and like the kind of play a production team couldn't wait to dive into. Hope to see it live!