Recommended by Ben Kaye

  • Kubrickian
    7 Nov. 2023
    More than just a play about a specific film director, KUBRICKIAN examines how men talk to - and with - each other, and how monotonous and lonely of an experience that can often be, distilled into pop culture analysis and droll small talk shorn of any truthful emotional connection. And then, yes, it is also about Stanley Kubrick, and how fractured his legacy and reputation have become, all before building to a final set-piece that genuinely reckons with how expansive and life-affirming his works stand for a specific generation of people. As totemic and baffling as, well, a Kubrick film.
  • The Sporting Life
    24 Aug. 2023
    For those looking for their feminist theater to have a little bit more bite, more menace, more complexity, more vicious humor, and a whole lot more blood. Muller's arch look at the societal expectations of womanhood gets twisted and tangled up in a larger-than-life way, creating a hyper-real world still steeped in the truth and tragedy of what it means for a girl to grow up. God bless whoever figures out how to stage this thing, but it'll be so worth it. It's what the theatre needs right now.
  • PLEASE LAUGH
    13 Jul. 2023
    A play committed to pure entertainment and engagement in the most sensational and deranged fashion. Absolutely steadfast in its mission of presenting a superbly heightened, yet overly familiar world of entertainment, making the audience a complicit participant in the mania of the story. Uncomfortable and gut-punching, and maybe one of the funniest treatises on the corruption of contemporary fame out there.
  • The Trade Federation, or, Let's Explore Globalization Through the Star Wars Prequels
    26 Apr. 2021
    The Trade Federation is the absolute best of contemporary playwriting: critically and unabashedly analyzing our pop culture through a political lens in a way that is daring, incisive, and absolutely hilarious. By the time we arrive at the play's grand, communal finale, it's impossible not to be hooked into this world of grand anti-capitalist analysis and George Lucas apologia. You'll never watch a Star Wars film the same way again, and for the better!
  • Red Clay Halo
    26 Apr. 2021
    A powerful work of community-building, an epic theatrical conversation between race, religion, and politics. Boyd's theatrical instincts shine in creating worlds of ephemeral storytelling and grounded character-building. A play that sings - literally and spiritually - and looks to our past to build a stronger future in solidarity. I cannot wait to see this play come alive one day soon.
  • The Tasters
    7 Aug. 2019
    Saw this at Victory Gardens' Ignition Festival. Earnestly and honestly one of the funniest and sharpest new plays I've seen in recent memory. While the setting is intentionally non-specific, the tone and message and impact and atmosphere are fantastically precise in their imagery and emotion. The fires of revolution are stoked and ignited in this bonkers piece of writing that so easily flips between chaos and introspection. How will we succeed in the revolution? Who knows, but I can't wait for a full production of this show to find out.
  • #NewSlaves
    7 Aug. 2019
    Saw this new work at Victory Gardens' Ignition Festival. An unflinching, movement-based, epic piece of writing, mixing and mangling realistic, down-to-earth drama with stylized imagery, the melding of history-hopping scenes, fourth-wall-breaking meta-commentary, and so much more. A sprawling, necessary drama connecting the dots between slavery and sports through emotionally resonant means. Truly loved this one.
  • The Gradient
    7 Aug. 2019
    Got to see this remarkably hilarious and harrowing new work at Victory Gardens' Ignition Festival. A bold, prescient look at the attempt to find a fixed solution to a chaotic problem. Deeply uncomfortable, asking the audience (especially masculine audience members) how we exhibit toxicity and aggression in our own every-day behavior. Not to mention, just a really damn funny piece of writing. I can't wait to see what a full production of this work looks like.