Recommended by Philip Middleton Williams

Matt Harmon blends Samuel Beckett's sense of space and stage with the agit-prop of Clifford Odets and gives us a powerful drama of silent struggle against forces beyond this one man's control. The build-up to the climax is powerful and inevitable, and the tension doesn't go away when the lights go out.

The publication of the names of the dead from Covid-19 on the front page of the New York Times and the inspiration for this monologue came the day before my father died. He was not a body any more than the names and dates and figures on this list, so reading this moment of brilliant reflection touched me in a way we all should feel: bodies are one thing, but souls are another. I don't believe in coincidence. I do believe in inspiration, and this piece is proof of it.

"The Bad News Bears" meets up with the road company of "Damn Yankees," all in the spirit of diversity and actually winning a game. Adam Seidel channels all the right energy into this team of misfits and wins your heart. And why not? Who wants to see a play about a bunch of winners? This is great fun!

This had a very familiar ring to it, and I smiled all the way through to the punchline. Spot-on funny, and if you've shared the situation, you know exactly what Vivian Lermond is showing us. Yay!

While I think a lot of readers could rightly see this as a lament of losing someone they thought they knew, I can also see it very much as how one might feel when one loses someone even if they were close, in love, together, and are now gone. The layers are many in these lines of poetry, and it spoke to me of something I would think, say, and pray no matter how deep the connection was. The simplest words are often the truest.

This is both a play and a poem; very succinct and powerful. Just a few words and you know everything...

I can tell when a playwright truly has fun with his writing and this characters, and in the case of "Aces Are Feverish," Matthew Weaver has so much fun in this send-up of hard-boiled detective film-noir play that does great honor to Dashiell Hammett. This hits all the right notes in all the right places, and I can just imagine it being done by the company of the Carol Burnett Show with all the fun that would come with it. All it needs is to be staged in black and white with an Adolph Deutsch score.

This fun little romp through history and time is told in such a way that you, dear Reader, despite all the modern conveniences, might be convinced that Ben's time was better than our own. This would be a great curtain-raiser for a production of "1776."

This is a great monologue that shows how lessons are learned in life in ways we don’t anticipate. I’m sure there are plenty of actors who would jump at the chance to do this for any festival or an audition.

Okay, as a lifelong baseball fan and old enough to (barely) remember when the Dodgers left Brooklyn, this sweet and loving play had me from the start. Bud's attempt to leave a heavenly message for his daughter is poignant and heartfelt, and you will see how important little things are to this family. It's a home run.