Recommended by Dave Osmundsen

With tenderness, humor, and expansive empathy, FLOWERS FOR MEN shoves beyond machismo stereotypes to explore what it means to be a man in a rapidly changing world. In addition to well-drawn, specific, and complex characters, Mendonça’s dialogue and stage directions are simply gorgeous. The personification of the flowers is also beautifully executed without feeling precious or pretentious. A heart-shattering play about intersecting journeys of healing that deserves to play across the country.

McGranaghan beautifully and delicately illustrates a complex and nuanced portrait of motherhood. A playwright who clearly loves her characters, Belle and Em are imbued with depth and individuality, and their relationship feels compellingly honest. We sense the deep love these two women have as they endure one of the most trying situations any couple can face. One sequence in particular gutted me with its shocking rawness and theatricality. Wonderful work!

I've been fortunate enough to not only read this play, but also see a workshop of it at Hunter College. Garrett Zuercher's critique of a recovery system that fails to meet the need of Deaf alcoholics is harrowing and heartbreaking. I was particularly compelled and devastated by the gorgeously drawn relationship between Tip and Alex. Zuercher's play is bleak, yes. But it will leave you asking some difficult and necessary questions about disability, addiction, and treatment. Please produce.

When we're given no choice but to work in a fundamentally flawed system, we can either try to make it better... or burn it down. Vince Gatton's cleverly structured Orwellian drama is shocking, darkly funny, and unpredictable. Despite the tragic inevitability of the play's events, the message is one of resilience and humanity, even in the face of certain defeat. The play also doesn't lose sight of the humanity that is suppressed by the atrocities of the system. Compelling work!

“One-Shot” works as a time capsule of the long-gone independent video store, a tribute to the power of cinema, and a quietly devastating queer love story. It’s to Rosendorf’s credit that all three characters feel compassionately and thoroughly drawn. I resonated (too much) with David, whose passion and knowledge for film outweighs his drive and ability to follow through on his dreams. The ending moved me deeply, and made me wish and hope for a better world for David, Martín, and Charles.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This play gives us three slices of obscure American history seen through the eyes of an Autistic academic named Agnes. Agnes stands up for her family's women while uncovering how men's cruelty has influenced American history, despite her own erasure becoming an inevitability. Kyle Smith’s characteristic gallows humor is well-employed, especially in the Giles Corey scene, but never loses sight of the women whose voices have been silenced.

With spare, poetic dialogue and an eye towards the personal and political, Gloria Majule’s MALA ARIA tells an intimate and sweeping story about one Tanzanian woman’s decision to obtain a PhD in America and the unpredictable consequences it has on her family. As the play progresses, it expands into a fierce indictment on healthcare, the pharmaceutical industry, and who has access to the medicine they need. Written with care and compassion, MALA ARIA is thought-provoking and heartrending.

Can love look and feel the same after a terrible loss? Reminiscent of "Rabbit Hole" with a stronger sci-fi bent, "angel's share" explores a couple whose approach to coping with the loss of their son forces them to confront their deep-seated differences. In addition to the creative setting and subtle world-building, Dominic Finocchiaro's dialogue is taut and poetic, leaning into the halting rhythms and tragically infrequent poetry of everyday speech. Lovely work.

REVOLUTION follows five characters in the afterlife as they fall in love with each other, reflect on the lives they left, and drink cheap alcohol. Through creative, clever dialogue and sharp, specific characterizations, REVOLUTION is a powerful but accessible play about the lengths we go to in order to enact change in an apathetic world. I was proud to direct a reading of it this past spring.

This lovely comedy feels like the contemporary answer to “Pippin,” in that it centers an exceedingly ordinary man who decides to seek out more from life, only to come up against a world addicted to misery and self-destruction. The message to get as much out of life as possible--to travel, to create, to risk--even if no one else cares, hit home for me. I also enjoyed the use of the Compere to guide us through the proceedings, especially their "percentile" asides.