Recommended by Scott Sickles

Shattering. Explosive. Devastating.

I just watched this performed in West Side Show Room's Rockford New Words. I am forever shaken.

Burbano essentially documented her outrage in her "failure to write a play about the murder of Vanessa Marquez." Instead, she has forged an indelible memorial to a life cut short in an incendiary outcry for reform and accountability among law enforcement who end black and brown lives with impunity.

This piece should be performed everywhere police reform and defunding are being debated because it will end the fucking debate! There's nothing more to be said.

Shattering. Explosive. Devastating.

Performance reviews are awful -- for the employee AND the boss, but especially for the employee and employee Alice has had enough!

Miller skillfully keeps Alice talking and Roger silent, not just because it's a monologue but for reasons that hit hard.

The miracle of the piece is that while it's a fountain of frustration and disappointment, Alice remains professional. There is no invective. Her rage is quiet. Her empathy for her boss, who has been holding her fate in his hands forever, is intact.

In one speech, there's a full life and a full relationship between real people.

So light! So frothy! So cheeky! Such a sharp-and-incivisve-allegory-on-how-pop-stars-are-manufactured-robbed-of-their-childhoods-set-loose-without-guidance-on-an-unbridled-path-of-destruction-with-no-regard-for-consequence-before-being-abandoned-into-oblivion-y type thing!

Another glorious and inventive ode to the dark side of pop culture from Steven Hayet, that is sweet, delicious and crazy, like an acid-laced M&Ms.

"I know which character is you! But who's this one supposed to be?"

Every playwright has been asked this. It's not that it's a legit question but how many times can we be asked it in one conversation?!?

What starts out as an innocuous and mildly annoying conversation (for the characters, NOT FOR US!) covers a simmering conflict beneath. Ruyle gives us a delightful foursome whose individual investments in the the nature of inspiration run the gamut from "utterly" to apathy.

Laugh-out-loud funny, it required a deft cast to peel back the layers, like a beautifully wrapped gift.

A cycle of plays and a cycle of life, A HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD depicts a complicated relationship between Dan and his father Clyde, from Dan's childhood through Clyde's passing decades later. Eschewing typically volatile straight-father/gay-son conflicts, Williams presents a gentle tale of people moving toward understanding as life and time bear down upon them.

Each piece stands on its own, but together they would make a powerful evening, which great roles for male actors of several ages. Doubling younger Clyde as older Dan has great potential to add power to an already impactful tale.

There are always windows of opportunity. It's just sometimes, even most of the time, those windows are closed. But they're there, waiting to open again.

Clyde and Dan's open window kind of sneaks up on them. But once they realize it, they grab it. They both know they don't have much time and there's a lot of ground to cover: a lot of love to bestow and hope to convey.

Williams sets the play in the most mundane of places, proving a perfect counterpoint to the specialness of the moment.

Powerful, resonant, a perfect two-hander for mature actors.

Utterly, utterly insane!

Levine creates a literal and metaphorical island of solipsistic delusion as a married couple celebrate a landmark anniversary oblivious to how their needs might affect others and apathetic to the plight of their fellow humans, be they strangers or family.

Interspersed are hilarious "Notes to the Director," impossible to stage without a narrator or projections. Take your pick! It's as though Arrested Development is being narrated by Rod Serling.

Is it a strong satirical indictment of bourgeois selfishness or a crazy romp? Who cares? It works either way!

One of the best stories I’ve ever experienced about a healthy marriage weathering a crisis. Tragedy has struck, so Rebecca and Tim do what humans do: make jokes, play with a sock monkey, and avoid the subject even while confronting it because avoiding it IS how they confront it.

Hageman wisely shows how even the best marriages have limitations especially when it comes to communication and reciprocity of need. There’s an imbalance occurring and, as much as they love one another, Rebecca and Tim can’t help each other. Yet.

Also, Hageman writes the best dad jokes.

If AbFab’s Edwina and Saffron were characters in a tragedy, this would be the knock-down drag-out, they’d be heading for. Murdoch’s mother-daughter conflict is brutally, uncompromisingly real, especially in its portrayal of the cycle of addiction. Maisie (the mom) may be genuinely repentant... today. Jennifer is having none of it because she’s been in various stages of survival mode literally longer than she can remember. The characters are gorgeously complex as is their relationship. The script crackles with a wasted, unrecoverable love that turns their mother daughter bond into shackles with long chains.

In a world where people learn about autism from film and TV savants comes a new hero: Miranda! Instead of counting cards or visualizing radical surgeries, she attempts something infinitely braver! Buying a cup of coffee in a socialization exercise to prove she can fit in with “normal” society! The degree of difficulty is downright sisyphusian!

Osmundsen evokes deep empathy, externalizing Miranda’s thoughts and feelings as she’s pulled between avatars of societal pressure and personal acceptance. The scene plays out with elegant detail and humanity.

A must-read for learning about austisic masking, general empathy, and one’s preconceptions.