Recommended by Rachael Carnes

A heartbreaking re-envisioning of the Iphigenia cycle, juxtaposing the Reagan-era "War on Drugs" with deeply-felt family drama. Pearson combines comedy, tragedy, story, song, dance - using the Greek form to great effect - twisting it tightly with our current incongruities. Language breaks away into lyrical poetry and swings into easy vernacular with breathtaking facility. Deft pacing and a driving plot leave us few outlets, driving us to an inevitable outcome. A beautiful, challenging new work, creating a dynamic ensemble for the ages.

A powerful page-turner set in a moment just before the world will turn on its axis: 1962, a family reveals painful histories and the intersecting complexities that bear down on decisions they face in this prescient, present moment. A fight against conformity, belief, family, a maelstrom of competing wants and needs, makes this piece fascinating and richly-hewn horror show. It's hard to know where to find comfort here, and in the not knowing, there's such mystery and illumination. A brilliant reading at the Great Plains Theatre Festival brought out very nuance of this timely piece.

Celebrate PRIDE by stopping what you're doing and reading this play. As a mom of a kid who wore whatever they wanted until the day *after* they started kindergarten, this play hits me in all the feels. I have been the parent lioness, encountering stupid, and shielding my kid - but how can a mom or dad protect their child from pernicious, systemic gender conformity that plagues our schools? Keyes' sharply-wrought play gets at the heart of why grown-ups and their unexamined baggage causes real harm, every single day. A beautiful, poignant work.

A play that dances between the cerebral and the embodied, this remarkable short play is long on history, focusing with specificity on childhood in a particular place and time - centering an iconic creature as a fixed point for the protagonist - smartly pinging us to our own "Guy the Gorilla". For me? it's Jeffrey the Boa Constrictor, at the Lincoln Park Zoo, in Chicago. No visit was complete without a scaly hello. I wonder: What are the constants for others? People, places, ideas? A poetic, relatable piece. I see it theatrically, with Guy slumped in the corner.

Irreverent, humane, profound and profane, McBurnette-Andronicos' play takes us on a sweeping journey through the history of the American Southwest, swinging us into an impasse, the introduction of settler-colonial assimilation over a tight-knit community. With rich detail and historical investigation, balanced by humor and theatricality, this piece resonates with the dynamics of community survival across the ages.

A familiar VRBO-like mountain cabin belies a mysterious string of connections, in this resonant meditation on loss, and living across the ages. Fechtor deftly picks up intertwining narrative threads, twisting each one into an inevitably strong and unbroken cord. There's a common ground that Fechtor creates here, between an easy vernacular, and Medieval wonder, a knowing/unknowing that develops the way a darkened space fills with candlelight, as our eyes adjust. A dream on death, loss, grief, and living with life itself. I'm grateful to have heard a reading of the play at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. Brava.

This incredible play shines a piercing bright light on a painful history - not going to say *what* exactly, to avoid spoiling Fisher's incredibly deft reveal - but this play's story world crafts and holds its dynamic tension with humanity and heart, it's relevant and timeless, an evergreen. Fisher's language choices are magnetic, with bold, relatable dialogue accented with gut-punch poetry. I'm grateful to have heard a reading of the piece at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and I'm left with images, ideas and inquiry that will stay with me for a long, long time. Brilliant work.

Being dead - or rather, folks thinking you're dead - has its advantages, as this wry comedy underscores. It's a chance to reinvent, to reconnect, even with her own self. Why be what everyone thinks you should be? With a bracing pace, abounding theatricality, genuine characters and whip-smart dialogue, this play offers a feminist new lens on an old tale. A reading at the Great Plains Theatre Conference dazzled with its energy and boldness, and surprised - in judiciously applied moments of pure poetry.

A deep meditation on grief and its ability to capture and cage people in their moment of loss, exacerbated by pernicious, omnipresent social media. Wellman employs humor, and a slow, creeping dread that draws us into the world of these richly-hewn, deeply-broken characters. I heard a reading of the play as part of the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and was stunned by the dynamic tension, the investment in story, the well of hope and the devastating reveals. Wellman find capacity to express the new, within an age-old universal emotion grief. Brava.

Magnetic characters thrust into an impossible situation explore deeply-moving themes in this intense, relevant, human play, with a core of environmentalism and ethics rarely so well-dramatized, because: Fire. Not only are we tracking smoke jumpers, but the ante is pushed higher when we get from the start that they do so to fulfill the terms of their incarceration. As an Oregonian who has seen my state ravaged by wildfires - increasing each year in duration and frequency - this play hits home. A reading at the Great Plains Theatre Conference brought out McCloskey's deft storytelling. Brilliant, tragic, memorable.