Recommended by Steven G. Martin

Jillian Blevins has crafted a miracle of a play in "Mere Waters." Read it, produce it.

"Mere Waters" appeals to the heart and the mind, to emotion and intellect; it has a historic setting but speaks to contemporary concerns; there is dramatic irony that an audience will cringe about on first reference, but there are also surprises and unforeseen turns; the dialogue has brutal realism as well as otherworldly moments, but this is also a highly visual play.

Greg Vovos is running Mom and Dad, his characters in "Like a Baby," through the wringer. It feels like they quickly experience every variation of parental anxiety throughout this short comedy, and it's great fun to read. It would be a lot of fun to watch live on stage.

"Like a Baby" has visual humor, physical humor, and funny dialogue; this is a flat-out comedy audiences will love and long remember.

I love this comedy. Mark Harvey Levine has created a slippery reality in "Plato's Cave." It's fun to see Gary's adventures as he's tossed from different scenario to different scenario. It's also a bit frightening seeing how the light layer of reality is so easily and entirely burst.

This is very brisk, a bit philosophical, and very funny. Audiences loved a production of "Plato's Cave" during a production at Southbank Theatre in Indianapolis in May 2023. it was the perfect energetic, chaotic play to end Act I of an evening of shorts.

Vince Gatton breaks your heart showing how a woman named Katie struggles. Although what's true and what's false isn't explicitly clear at the start of "Ground Zero," Gatton provides clues so audiences will intuit Katie's actions and will understand her.

Gatton's skillful writing is enough to make "Ground Zero" a standout. But it's his humanity that makes it soar; his love for Katie, his insistence on hope make this a Must-Produce play.

Sensitive, gentle revelations; emotional resonance and resilience; an understated but clear theatricality; explorations of lies, truth, perspective, and personal history; hope. "Ground Hero" is a gift.

I'm crying after having read "Every, Every." Audiences will, too.

How is there so much vibrancy packed into a single 10-minute play? Greg Vovos shows the first spark of love, the despair during the aftermath of tragedy, magic theatricality, dramatic irony, the poetic/thoughtful dialogue found in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," the blunt realistic dialogue of grief and loss. All of it woven together seamlessly, naturally as though it was always meant to be. And in Vovos' skilled hands, it is.

I'm crying after having read "Every, Every." You will, too.

Emily McClain is such a good playwright that I felt myself supporting both Kellie's and Sarah's sides at different times in this play. Is Kellie overreacting? Possibly. Is Sarah naïve? Possibly. As with any healthy relationship, there was a strong back-and-forth in communication, sometimes pushing the edge of civility but ultimately ending with a stronger understanding.

This is a relationship drama, but McClain adds depth: LGBTQIA couples shouldn't have to consider possible familial and societal pressures in everyday situations like planning a vacation destination. We want to live everyday life with none of those clouds overhead.

An intriguing portrait.

Scott Sickles breaks hearts -- his characters' and his audience's -- better than anyone. And there is such wisdom in "I'll Find My Soul as I Go Home" that Davey can't appreciate just yet because of his age and inexperience. It's heartbreaking.

"Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean" is a terrific satire/dark comedy. Even at the end of the world, does humanity take any responsibility for its impact? Lee R. Lawing suggests otherwise in this more-dangerous-than-you-expect short play in which people get their just desserts.

Elisabeth Giffin Speckman has written a workplace drama that is all about tension between the two characters, Tammy and Jerome. A lot of that tension is open -- quickly seen and defined, and perhaps even tossed aside: generational differences, educational and socioeconomic differences, too.

But those types of tension are merely foundational to where Giffin Speckman takes an audience and her characters. She takes every detail of the play's given circumstances to fashion a violent, visual, metaphor-filled moment that is genuinely chilling. There's danger in "Safe Passage" that is contemporary and feels all-too-prevalent in the U.S.

Sheila Crowley's "Rights of Springtime" is a wonderful play for a seasoned female actor. I love that Crowley uses the monologue form to spotlight the beauty of storytelling that transforms the speaker. There is adventure and delight and romance and all of the subjects that resonate so well with the oral tradition, but the subject itself it storytelling and its power: the richness of options and "What if?"

Also it's wonderful to find an older character whose aim is to spice up things and act accordingly, not whither and wane.

"Rights of Springtime" is deeply satisfying on many levels.