Recommended by Katherine Gwynn

a gorgeous, funny and heartbreaking existential play without a man in sight--my kinda play.

Just saw this yesterday at Victory Gardens, and I was stunned by how precisely and deftly Del Rosso carries us through a play diving deep into the idea of what sexual harassment does to women (and men's) psyches and questioning whether forgiveness is ever possible. It's also fucking hilarious. I want to see this show produced now, and I want to make a lot of men in my life watch it.

Saw this at Steppenwolf's outlook series, and it was a joy from start to finish. A deep dive into what it means to be an young artist who wants to make something that matters (and the self-destruction and isolation that can come out that desire) rendered with sharpness and empathy. It's funny, it's heartbreaking, and I'm going to have MUSE stuck in my head for a while.

a hilarious nightmare of a play with jokes that land like a used tampon thrown in your face (and I mean this in the best way.)

a taut and sharp look at how women survive (and help one another survive) violence, KAMJ had me going from laughing hysterically from feeling like I'd just been punched in the gut. It wastes no time in putting you in the place of these 4 women, just trying to get by.

"Wicked Creatures" is gothic horror where the monsters in the home aren't ghosts or beasts, but misogyny, ableism, and the denial of bodily autonomy--wholly human horrors. It deftly navigates complicated questions around consent, being a survivor of abuse and perpetrating that same abuse, and what it means to exists as a woman in the world. Though a period piece, it feels timely and sharp, and offers no easy answers.

a vicious and delightful gothic horror--I swallowed this whole play in one gulp. The violence feels so carefully measured throughout that the end still managed to shock me. And Agatha and Emilie's relationship--that last scene they share--it's thrilling.

Bitterly funny with writing sharp as a knife, I started reading this at work and couldn't stop. It manages to be a incisive critique of how trans women are often treated by the world around them (as lesser women, as men pretending to be women, as sexual conquests) while allowing Penelope to still be complicated, messy, and no one's martyr.

This play thrums with poetry, laughter, trauma, sex, loss, and lip-synching but above all, it is fervently tender. It's a play that is unapologetically queer, and full of spectacle, without making a spectacle of the lives of its queer characters. This play is one long love letter I want to plaster all over the stage.

Barnard is a writer who toes the lines gracefully between tenderness and brutality, the mundane and the surreal. This play is taut, sharp, and honest all the way through, slowly building until it ends in a muffled explosion.