Recommended by Allyson Dwyer

I had the honor of experiencing a reading of this play, and it is perfection, a real treasure for actors and audiences alike. A lean, razor-sharp, hyper-focused tale that had the room filled with laughter, groans, moans, and more. Set within a single location, a single evening and a singular moment in American history, the setting of early 2000s/post-9/11 America is brilliantly conveyed to unearth the darkness of what lie under the nostalgia of a time we still have yet to reckon with as a country. Moving & vital.

Dan is brilliant because there is nothing funnier, cooler, creepier than stuff with a self-aware rock-a-billy southern gothic type twist. Poor Sherman, he just wanted to be cool and didn't realize being a cool guy is a wild world to navigate & perhaps he was actually putting a target on his back (or head?). Dan squeezes so many jokes, lore and even character development (those two intense sisters and their push-n-pull game of Uno) into a mere 13 pages. A frightening joy.

I thankfully saw a wonderful online reading of this during lockdown and still find myself thinking about its tender absurdities. Carl has such a gift for nuance, whether its the spaces between how we communicate or how he animates onomatopoeia on the page, as if the script were a comic book. His writing becomes animated in how specific his choices are. But the most lasting image to me is the deceitful intimacy of our phones, how we supplant our IRL relationships with the false warmth of an inanimate device. It may feel real, but it is anything but.

maybe one of my most favorite plays ever, BVSN is an imagination odyssey, a spa for the brain, a floating mind puzzle, a string of magic code word poetry. It's a play about metaphors seen and unseen, about a worrying future where the answers are beneath our feet, hiding inside a sweet potato, covered in the smoke of unrest. I am always thinking about the sweet little mages in this play. Kathy animates so much of the sadness in our world through humor and beauty and playfulness, and it moves me so much.

Alyssa's comedy is so bright & nuanced because her dialogue comes from characters that feel lived in and real. People often speak comedically because in real life we reach for humor in times of stress, discomfort and alienation. But beneath the layer of detachment and quips, you feel real people with deep existential problems that are too painful to begin to contend with - especially alone. Such complicated characters, in such a tight, tiny, perfect package. This could easily be produced today and should!

In Elijah's dreamy and playful one act, each character is an instrument, a vital player in an ecosystem of a specific location of experiences. That place is band camp as a teen. The roaring hormones, the murky squishy fear of both being perceived or not perceived, all while expected to perfect a craft - music - that should for all purposes represent self-expression, and not stress. The characters, treated both as adults and children - an impossible place to be. It's no wonder that as we reach a night of horrors, we can't help but relate, and laugh.

Had the absolute joy to stream this, and I was totally blown away by Tristan's emphasis on the theater of poetry. Beautifully tender characters speaking their innermost fears, wants and feelings. This is the kind of stuff I can watch infinitely. An excavation of a concept, and the characters who become real as they imbue those meanings. The script itself is a stunning poem - it shows us the powerful bare bones push and pull of love, lovers, art and reason, dreams and beyond.

You will feel this play, and feel it again, and again later, when you remember moments, or characters, or phrases. Franky has such a command of theatricality, the play begins to feel almost cinematic in its grasp of the characters and the soft, subtle windows into their worlds and the way he isn't afraid to break from patterns or form. His writing is deeply emotional, visceral, pulpy and pulsing with life, to the point that you feel as trapped and confined as Prisoner. I cannot recommend this play enough.

Catherine is dangerously good at writing plays that put us in the headspace of its characters. In the same way these two housewives are never quite sure of their reality, we are left to question the reality of the play and the reality of these womens lives and how their interactions echo into modern day. It also has one of the funniest last lines I've ever read. A terrifying but hilarious read.

A vulnerable time-spanning story that treats the personal as a delicate epic, much like the Victorian romance novels that Henry reads. These stories are so inherent to who he is that in sharing them he gives a piece of himself each time. This play is no different - a fearless sharing that demands its audience weigh each word, each interaction, as we come to experience the world through Henry's eyes. Very beautifully crafted and moving.