Recommended by Dave Osmundsen

Very charming, very silly, and ultimately very sweet play about two siblings who will protect each other at all costs. Bray gives a few stray clues as to what their right-wing environment is like, and it's clear how much this environment of fear and paranoia has impacted the two children. Despite this, Bray keeps the piece lighthearted, and it's easy to fall in love with these two characters. Sweet play!

A fascinating pas de deux between two characters, both of whom want justice in the world but want to achieve it in two completely different ways. Should they each stay in their lane, or be more radical in their response to social injustices? Perez skewers SJWs and sellouts alike, and portrays a couple who, as their relationship unfolds over several years, can't live with or without each other. You know that these two probably shouldn't be together, but it's devilishly fun to watch them turn on (and to (and on)) each other.

How do we define what we want out of a movement while holding onto our personal beliefs, and how do those beliefs contrast and confront one another? In this wonderfully engaging and bittersweet dramedy, Boyd gives us five well-rounded and believable characters who each want to see a change in their country--but are the changes they want to see compatible? In less than 70 pages, Boyd gives a complex and comprehensive exploration of why revolutions are so difficult. Highly political without being didactic, this play is deeply emotional and deeply human. Great work!

I was fortunate enough to see this play at IRT. A warm-hearted, slyly funny, and deeply human story, this slice-of-life takes us into the lives of a group of employees at a scrappy amusement park and explores not only their dreams and desires, but why they choose to stay in a less-than-ideal working environment. Many scenes took me back to grunt jobs I used to work, specifically the scheduling conflicts. The final scenes are a devastating exercise in dramatic irony, especially because you’ve come to care about these characters so much. Wonderful play!

In "Young Men & Recovery," Scanlan eschews many of the inspirational tropes of high school football narratives (such as "Varsity Blues" and "Friday Night Lights") and explores the harm that toxic masculinity in athletics can have on the players. Most of the play is a slice-of-life depiction of a weigh-in and football practice, but towards the end, the play takes a devastating turn that forces the audience to reconsider everything they saw up until that point. Your heart can't help but break for these young men whose lives are irrevocably changed by the sport.

An absurdist look into a couple travelling to take the next step in their relationship, Goldman-Sherman expertly captures the isolation one often feels with the person they're supposedly the most intimate with. The supporting characters are delightfully eccentric and poignant in their own ways, underpinning the existential longing and anxieties that the central couple faces--they've lost each other, but can they really live with each other? Clever, poignant, and hilarious, I can't wait to see this piece staged!

It’s one thing to fight the dragon and think you’ve defeated it. It’s another to deal with the emotional aftermath of the dragon not being completely vanquished. Here, Sickles gives us two characters who are flawed, hilarious, and compassionate. They drive each other up the wall at times, but are ultimately there for each other in the best possible way. This will also be a blast for sound and set designers—I found it exciting to imagine to blood-soaked stage and the sounds of Astaroth! Hilarious and moving work.

At once a thriller that gradually reveals itself to the audience and a complex portrayal of mother/daughter relations, "All the King's Horses" swiftly and theatrically explores how lies and deception complicate one woman's bodily autonomy.

Malakhow gives us an intimate and dynamic relationship between two young men who uncover and realize the trauma they have suffered at the hands of the same person in acutely different ways. It is not always a pretty picture--Malakhow often goes for the messy and the complicated, particularly in the second half of the play. But the depth of emotion here is outstanding, and you feel as if you have become friends with Peter and Marcus by the end of it. A lovely, heart-wrenching, and quietly moving play.

A lovely, lovely play about how we deal with heartbreak long after the damage has been done. Sickles beautifully captures the tension, the yearning, and the agony that quietly simmers when an important figure from your past returns to ask what feels like the impossible. Carefully calibrated dialogue and subtle humor. Gorgeous!