Recommended by Joshua H. Cohen

Uses the theatrical conventions of mask-work in an original and consistently funny send-up of the interview process. Anybody who has ever started out in anything (i.e., everybody) will see themselves in the charming everywoman at the center of the play.

What price would you pay to get justice for a past wrong, and prevent a present one? And what would you do if you thought the price was too high? William Triplett gives us an essentially loving marriage, and then reveals the cracks beneath the surface one by one. The brutality on display in the name of love is head-spinning and stomach-churning.

The play begins as a pointed critique of White Feminism, and sharpens its knives from there. It carves away at any pretense of plausible deniability, until the failures of inclusion of a movement that was supposed to be about expanding rights (then and now) are laid bare. Simultaneously a galvanizing war cry for those who already want to do better, and a vital, theatrical history lesson for everybody else.

A portrait of grief, for others, for oneself, for chances lost. In the end, it dares to offer hope that people can change for the better.

When you see a play with a playwright as its central character, this is not the direction you expect it to go. Lacerating wit about the chosen ignorance that arises from overweening ambition, from a writer who has clearly seen a lot of it.

Decades of family strife come to a head when one member of the family decides she's not going to keep the family's secrets anymore. Great use of imagery and metaphor in a realistic, and highly specific, setting.

Imagine if Charles Dickens and Jane Austen teamed up to write science fiction. Superbly original world-building through language -- but in building another world, it has something trenchant to say about gender roles in our own.

"20 Verses" uses the inherent overlap between theater and religious worship to tell a very private story in a very public setting. As the theatricality takes over, the play successfully challenges the audience's comfort zone in a way that engages empathy.

This play does a great job of subverting heterosexual teen rom-com tropes and finding fresh life in them by placing them in a gay context. All of a sudden, they're heartbreaking and heartwarming again.

There is a devastating moment when you know that this family is not coming back from this fight - not in the play, and probably not ever. You're rooting for the women of the family to finally be heard, and then you realize that even if it does happen, it's too little, too late. The play makes great use of the short play format to zero in on this one turning point in the life of a family.