Recommended by Donald E. Baker

In a very few pages, Dana Hall perfectly captures the mental health toll deep and lasting grief has taken on Mrs. Clark and the frustration Mr. Clark feels when his wife doesn't/won't/can't get "better." The play is made even more affecting because it is set in the 1950's, when the standard treatment available for depression was electric shock, and we know that is what awaits Mrs. Clark. This is a sad piece but exquisitely well written.

Opposites may attract, but to maintain such a relationship takes effort, compromise (or acquiescence), and a common purpose. For Gerald and Max, that purpose was raising their son Kyle, though even in that one was more invested than the other. In this emotion-laden piece, we see how Kyle's sudden overdose death swiftly and completely unravels these two men's lives. It's the sort of play that will hit an audience right in the heart. Excellent work.

Scott and Deke were successful playwriting partners (and lovers) but they've been estranged for years. Their agent (and his bosses) want them to get back together and write not only for the stage but, more profitably, for films. Can they revive their joint career, possibly their love affair, and one of their old plays for a new medium? Once again Williams has given us believable characters to care about (even the agent) in a work that lives up to the high standards Williams has set for himself.

The stakes are high in this excellent short drama. Time is running out for Maria to decide between two courses of action, either of which will drastically change her life. The playwright deftly holds off revealing Maria's decision and keeps the reader guessing until the very end. I, for one, cheered her courageous choice. Nicely done.

Too many people lose loved ones to dementia. You feel for this woman, perhaps especially if you've experienced the same thing or if you're afraid you might. Good honest work.

Actors are going to have a great deal of fun presenting this wacky all-female sendup of beauty pageants during which a murder takes place as each contestant demonstrates her "talent." Every character can be mined for laughs, particularly Merle the take-no-prisoners one-armed stagehand. Audiences will love it.

August is a playwright, and like many of us, I suspect, I feel such empathy for his plight. Since I have researched the KKK for two full-length plays, my internet search history, like his, would be open to wild misinterpretation by the "authorities." In August's case, his research lands him in real jeopardy in a murder investigation. Does the playwright manage to convince his interrogators that his search history was only in service of his next great play? Read this fun play and find out!

Scott Sickles is unsurpassed at projecting current events into believable visions of a bleak, dystopian future America. With "Drain" it appears the reality of that future may have very nearly overtaken his fictional imaginings. At least an event like that in the play's final lines has not yet occurred. Not that we're aware of, anyway. But who knows? "Drain" joins previous Sickles plays as an essential warning claxon from a master.

How would you and your family spend the day the world ends? The father in "Merry Birthday of July" choses to pretend it isn't going to happen and manufactures a new holiday celebration to distract his children. They both humor him, one reluctantly and the other with false enthusiasm. Their attempt at normalcy in the face of complete and utter distraction will haunt your memory.

In 1940, a theater in Oslo plans to present an anti-war play but their rehearsal is interrupted by the German invasion of Norway. The actors scatter but an audience of one persuades the remaining staff to finish the rehearsal. It becomes a call to take up arms and resist. One wonders. Is there a theater in present-day America that would be willing to risk performing an anti-fascist play in the face of possible political and societal opposition and retaliation? Excellent work by Syran.