Recommended by Robert Weibezahl

This play is a deeply felt love story - not just about the developing love between two young men but also the story of the struggle to embrace self-love in a world where the odds seem stacked against that possibility. A candid, brave, and accomplished work from a young playwright of notable promise.

Marj O’Neill-Butler does something very subtle and even a bit daring in FINDING HELP – infusing a normally fraught, rarely funny situation that so many of us face or will face with wicked humor, while granting her elderly protagonist agency, dignity, and the last laugh.

Omorotionmwan condenses hundreds of years’ worth of repressed conversations about slavery, entitlement, guilt, and reparations into just ten minutes in this remarkable short play. As the story—simple yet riveting—unwinds, the playwright deftly turns the tables and leaves us speechless, but not without much to think about—and hopefully act on. Timely and timeless.

It is a daring yet brilliant choice: framing not only timely political differences but fundamental disparities in generational points-of-view within a banal discussion of the proper way to heat up pizza rolls. Set just after the political disaster that began with the last presidential election, this play is doubly relevant as the next election approaches. Much to digest (and I don’t mean the pizza rolls).

This thought-provoking, meditative piece—a sort of monologue with accompanying voices—speaks not only to the strange, isolated times in which we are living, but to the habitual isolation that writers (and other artists) need, yet sometimes cannot bear. Rinkel sweetly nails the chronic melancholy fused with eternal hope that is the artist’s life and truth.

Too many moments of unmitigated cleverness to count! This absurdist, postmodernism gem gleefully manipulates and mocks the ever-evolving tropes and archetypes of theatre, forcing playwrights and theatergoers alike to consider the way our own notions and tastes alter with changing fashions. How can something be so erudite and so funny at the same time? This 10-minute charmer should be performed as a curtain-opener at every playwright’s conference.

“Memories... they’re like an album of photographs: faded and two-dimensional,” says Clyde, the recurring father character in these four plays, but Williams’s always deft writing is anything but. Each play works beautifully alone, but collectively they pack an emotional wallop that lingers long past the final lines of dialogue. Tears and laughter in equal measure. I’d love to see these plays produced as a set.

Very few plays make you laugh a lot, especially when merely reading them, but Busser’s weirdly and wonderfully macabre tale of Death and his wife planning a vacation with a perky travel agent is nonstop hilarity—especially for anyone with a penchant for clever wordplay seasoned with a pinch of corny humor. This play is so funny on the page one can only imagine how comically effective it will play on the stage.

There is a venerable tradition of “found poetry” and with this play Carbajal has done something similar—constructing a found play from the pages of Craigslist’s Missed Connections section. The found phrases, brilliantly reassembled, form a moving and telling tapestry of voices that is by turns funny, poignant, and lusty, underscoring our shared desires, loneliness, and need for human connection. Bravo!

This is a very subtle and wise play. In a series of beautifully rendered scenes, presented in a scattered chronology, Molly Wagner empathetically explores the long relationship trajectory of a man and woman—he a Catholic, she not—and how the structure and strictures of religion both impel and impede their lives and love. With its frequent shifts in time and mood, it requires a deft hand from director and actors, but it would be a worthwhile challenge to tackle a staging.