Recommended by Scott Sickles

You've either had the discussion, heard the discussion or both! The pretentious collegiate debate over the inherent fallacy of artifice in art! Pflaster sets this conversation in the far distant future, hilariously predicting university students still having this discussion hundreds of years from now. What makes it special is WHY they're having it. What art have they been deprived of? What has been lost over time that they need to recapture, rediscover, reinvent?! The stakes skyrocket as they reach deep into their history and drag it to the present. "Say more!"

One of the most elegantly written, profoundly moving plays about the cascading, overwhelming emotions and potentially devastating risks of nascent love I've ever had the joy and pain to experience. Hayakawa instantly and expertly establishes the worlds of her two Emilys, giving each a fraught ebullience. Her heroines' hearts are laid bare as they and the women they love do battle with their own desires and the mores of their times. It's thrilling to behold.

Isolate enough testosterone in one place and suddenly its Lord of the Flies meets Deliverance with a touch of Dead Poets Society (but significantly more Whitman-esque, if you know what I mean…). The yearning among and in between generations of men as they traverse a wilderness both environmental and psychological is haunting, fiercely erotic (even as you’re wincing), and unfathomably sad. It’s prime Williams that soars as its characters’ physical endurance and moral fortitude plummet. Rocky Mountain High, indeed! Well done!

Bravo, Busser!

There are so many things I want to say about this play: about its characters, its structure, its romanticism – both old-fashioned and deeply contemporary. But I don’t want to give anything away.

I will say I loved the twists and turns, the ups and downs, and the truly cheesy puns. It’s a great take on dating, nascent relationships, and the identities we present versus who we truly are.

A fast and furious ten minutes that would be a delight to perform, stage, or watch – especially on a date!

Oh my God... Reading this aloud to myself, I had several giggle fits, gasped out one or two "oh no!"s, looked on agape in amused bewilderment, and may have injured by neck throwing my head back in laughter while simultaneously slapping my knee. (My attorney will be in touch, Lisa.)

Based on the *magnificent* vocal choices I was making on the fly while reading it cold, I can only surmise that this play is a gift for actors. The characters are terrific, their circumstances constantly inventive, and Feriend's verbal rhythms and repetitions are comically orchestral!

Hilarious and wonderful!

Maybe would argue that Dave the protagonist did the right thing; I certainly would. He stopped someone’s suffering. But Dave is a man of medicine. Beyond that, perhaps because he has seen so much death, perhaps because of his own dreams for his own life, he cherishes life. Williams illustrates the toll these decisions have on the human soul: not the life and death decisions as much as “this death or that death?” When one person’s suffering ends, the weight of that ending bears down upon the living. Powerful, simply told, endlessly complex.

How much is one person supposed to take? Especially when the whole world has descended into chaos. Just because there’s a pandemic going on, it doesn’t mean other tragedies won’t strike and people are still dying in other ways.

Miller’s captures a mother caught between the thing that killed her child and the people who should have saved him takes place in a kind of gateway between worlds, an intersection of grief, logic, and magical thought. Her plea is anguished strangely sensible, and utterly mesmerizing.

WHORTICULTURE covers so much ground narratively, thematically, sociologically, psychologically, emotionally, you-name-it-ally, there should be an entire course of study devoted to examining its lessons.

I love plays that are essentially autopsies – of lives, relationships, souls... in this case, even a society. WHORTICULTURE opens up the body of the world and examines its component parts, with astounding depth and detail, though the lives of three girls and the people that molded them into women. Endlessly inventive and relentlessly powerful, it’s a tour de force for its actors. Goldman-Sherman’s writing is unflinching, uncompromising, and glorious!

Much like the world of the play, which is the world we live in, A DAY IN THE NEWS hits its targets with a powerful BANG! Several in fact. Sharp, succinct, and quietly devastating.

Utterly infuriating! Lamedman perfectly captures the ongoing battle many off us face every day, online and even more tragically in person, with anti mask COVID deniers. Her Charlotte is nicer than I would have been. The specificity of each character’s circumstances gives them depth and perspective, making them people rather than positions. HOAX hits home.