Recommended by Donald E. Baker

A young girl with a disability discovers strength and independence she didn't know she had when she follows a squirrel through a portal into a world only she can save. A large but flexible cast with roles for adults and young people should appeal to community theaters. Designers would have fun with the costume possibilities for animals from various mythologies, which can be as simple or as elaborate as desired. This super fantasy with an uplifting message should delight audiences of all ages. Highly recommended. Get it from Next Stage Press.

Lawrence needs love and Allan needs a needy lover. Lawrence's friends realize it's a recipe for disaster but Lawrence must figure that out for himself. Sickles handles his material--both its emotional and technical content--surehandedly in this relatively early work. The ending is highly satisfying but whether it's a happy one or not is for the audience/reader to decide. It's a great read and would be an even better production. Get it from Next Stage Press.

What a super collection of lgbtq+ plays! There is literally something for everyone in this anthology regardless of age or gender expression. Most notable are several great opportunities for actors who are no longer the buff twenty-year-olds they once were. This alone would set Alterman's work apart from many other plays in the gay genre. Taken together these plays and monologues would be an entertaining and enlightening evening of theater.

If this monologue were a piece of music it would be a rondo. "You're working the checkout ... and you just want to be touched" is the recurring theme that becomes more heartbreaking with each repetition. In between, the clever vignettes the nameless clerk's mind conjures up about his customers become more and more elaborate until reality becomes fantasy--or does it? This play is a great opportunity for actors of any age, gender expression, race, ethnicity, or body type and it will stick with you long after you read it. Great work.

This short monologue is Williams's imagining of a straight homophobe's hateful response to the same-sex relationship so beautifully described in his "A Tree Grows in Longmont." I would like to see it performed as a prologue to a performance of "Longmont," which would then give the lie to everything "Larry" says. Good honest work.

Love can endure even after a relationship fails and even, maybe especially, after one partner dies. The tree in question is a memorial to the deceased partner; the play is a sometimes brutally honest examination of the love and the relationship as told through the memories of both men. The characters are so recognizable, the situation so relatable, that you can't help but be moved. Read it, and keep a hanky handy.

After the death of their mother, two brothers have reached the point at which they can recall her with laughter as well as with tears. This is a sweet play about a childhood episode that will become one of those stories shared at every family gathering through the years. I hope when this is produced, the pivotal photograph of mayhem during the baking of a cake is projected for the audience to appreciate. Great job.

Jarred Corona is a fresh new voice who creates worlds--edgy, unsettling, dystopian--that are horrifying reflections of contemporary society. "In Fairness," with its possibly faint echoes of "Pillowman" and "Godot," is the perfect entry into the disturbing alternate realities that inhabit his fertile mind. It would challenge actors, designers, and audience alike and provoke conversation long after the production it so richly deserves. This is a playwright whose career will be a joy to watch unfold.

After burying her husband and enduring the wake, Helen finally has a few moments to take stock of her life and her marriage and to take the first tentative steps toward healing what's left of her family from decades of hurts and misunderstandings. A lovely play made even more so if one also reads the two related monologues, "Broken Glass" and "Final Dispatch." A great opportunity for an older female actor. Highly recommended.

Familiar figures from the New Testament come off the stained glass windows and inhabit the real world in this fresh look at a timeless story. Focusing on the journey of James the Just from resentful younger brother of Jesus to the reluctant head of the fledgling church provides a healthy reminder that these people were human beings before they were saints. Highly recommended.