Recommended by Nick Malakhow

What a funny, lovely play that would be a treat for not just actors but directors, designers, and choreographers to sink their teeth into. Kirk Shimano's self-effacing and sympathetic protagonist, Akira, goes on a poignant journey as he explores love, loneliness, outsidership, friendship, and adulthood. The folktales' emphases on listener interpretation, seizing opportunities, and learning from mistakes perfectly echo and amplify Akira's growth and misadventures as a young gay man. Additionally, Shimano tackles racism in gay dating and reflection on one's family history, shedding important intersectional light on his main character's experiences. I'd love to see this staged!

This is a beautiful, nuanced play! Avalon is a compelling central character and hir journey is rendered here in the urgent present with some detours to a difficult past. Erin Lerch explores the experiences and traumas of growing up nonbinary in this small town, and captures perfectly the cognitive dissonance of returning home a different, inspiring, more grounded person, but still unable to escape the feelings (and people) left behind. All of this is done without contrived theatrics. Lerch executes beautifully-illustrated seismic shifts within and between characters that are so much greater than the sum of their parts!

As a fan of all kinds of horror, I enjoyed this genre-bending play! I appreciated the extreme contrast between the comfort and ease of the first quarter of the piece and Laura Beth's abrupt discovery which upends her life. I was swept along for the ride as revelations came forth about Hope, Ethan, and the true nature of LB's pregnancy. IN THE SLUSH worked for me as a paranoia-inducing and propulsive horror story, and it also struck me as an intriguing exploration of relationships--being and feeling trapped, unrealized expectations, and trust/deceit. I'd love to track this play's development!

This is a nuanced and sensitively rendered look at a moment of crisis within a family. While John and Sara's marital implosion is the catalyzing force in the play, the ripple effects and seismic changes it causes in the remainder of the family make the story what it is. It's a poignant and truthful look at what happens when long-simmering dissatisfaction and tensions go ignored. Despite the big themes--divorce, infidelity, various-stage-life-crises, illness--Seidel successfully avoids contrived theatrics and histrionics and, instead, creates a really lovely and quiet examination of family and the disappointments of adulthood.

I was thoroughly engrossed in this intricately written piece! I loved how not only was the scenario itself was rich enough fodder for a compelling story, but Hoke also pushes the audience to constantly question and reframe how they'd feel about the situation given a rotating smorgasbord of gendered interactions. I also appreciated how the dialogue's flexibility and gender neutrality was so nuanced. The code-switching individual actors would have the opportunity to do while relating to various scene-partner-permutations would be a delightful challenge and also an excellent opportunity for bold conversation starting about gender, power, relationships, and propriety.

I was quickly engrossed in this intimate piece that explores large themes of adolescence, peer pressure, failed/failing relationships, and broken expectations. I particularly loved how, throughout the first several scenes, it was unclear what the relationship was between the two main narrative strands. Ellie and Tracy's dynamic was rendered in a pitch-perfect manner. David and Alice's relationship illuminated the particular sadness and disconnection of a young couple tied together by increasingly tenuous threads. The whole piece is conducted with a quietness and subtlety that is theatrical, tender, and microscopically focused. A poignant cross-section of people is presented here.

A complex and atmospheric piece that will stick with me long after I've put it down. Van and Hank are two disparate, aching souls whose moment of connection feels sad, dangerous, and incredibly human. Both characters feel like lost boys in need of taking care of, making the father-son motif (which comes to a fraught apex) feel so much more complicated than it would have been otherwise. I appreciated that Hank, despite the fact that he is reeling from personal circumstances and is, ostensibly, a sympathetic character, is not let off the hook for this troubling encounter.

An excellent and nuanced play about and for young people! Christopher gives us three eclectic and equally three-dimensional characters whose shifting alliances are tied to their complex grappling with identity, desire, and life in contemporary America. Luis' arc and Jesse's confrontation with him about being white-passing, his privilege, and an exploration of the complexities of Latinx identity are things I've, of course, not seen enough of onstage, much less between articulate-yet-realistic teens. Christa, who could be read as a villain, is written with nuance as well. As a biracial NJ-born Latinx boy, this hit all the resonant chords!

This amazing, intimate, beautifully-rendered play is compelling on many levels. Chance is a well-rendered multi-dimensional character whose self-destructive impulses pique and draw out audience sympathy and connection rather than alienate himself from us. On another level, through Chance's journey, Christopher explores larger themes of despair and depression, suicide, loneliness, connection, and isolation in the queer community. To top it off, the senses of both literal place and the more figurative atmosphere are vivid and well-realized. I sincerely hope to see this onstage soon!

I had a blast getting to know all of the characters in this funny, smart, and offbeat play. Reggie, Emerson, and Asha's relationships to one another, the bookstore, their identities, and activism were portrayed with complexity and nuance. The disarming presence of JJ began as absolutely hilarious before taking more tense and distressing turns. The use of Greek myth evoked tragedy and fate for me, which mirrored the conversations about the social inevitability of oppressive patriarchal structures, even if tempered, growing malignant. I love how this piece proposes a way out that's vicious because it needs to be.