Recommended by Scott Sickles

We should never stop asking "what more can this man take from us?" and especially "what more can he take from the black community?" From the national dignity to racial violence with impunity, the consequences are global. (SPOILER ALERT) Here, the current occupant of the Oval manages, without putting forth ANY effort, to steal a man's name. Not his whole identity, just a name. A name that is everything. A great metaphor for the theft of Who We Are As A Nation and a sharp social commentary, Cathro also skewers the oversensitivity of the corporate left. And it's funny!

Perfect! Just damn perfect.
What starts out as the paternal response every gay child wants or would have wanted to hear, quickly becomes a deeply individual story of love, filled with history and a lifetime of emotion. Just when you think you know what the next sentence will be, Deray throws in a perfect little surprise. With his horror pieces, he's shown great facility in setting up familiar expectations, then surpassing them with a sublime change in direction that maximizes the payoff. It's great to see that skill extending across genres! This is beautiful. Read it. Perform it.

What I love about Steven G. Martin’s plays is their heart. There’s always a delicate yet profound sense of love and connection versus loneliness and disconnection. And that’s still true here... even though the heart is a dark, vast abyss. A Humble Path is a complex examination of evil borne from mismanaged expectation and rage, an inablity to find a middle ground between extemes, of overcorrection and repression. Every word of Abe’s history, every breath he issues to utter it, is of the utmost urgency. An extraordinary monologue, full of loneliness, rage and loss.

An astonishing and powerful monologue, not only of one woman's resilience and strength, but also an indictment of the insanity and the assault in their safety women face every moment of every day. The sheer commonness of what this woman has endured should terrify you. Extraordinary piece for an actress.

An EXQUISITE five-minute masterpiece, Sparrowfall is a beautiful autopsy of a relationship, and a paean to the simultaneously eternal and finite nature of love. It jumps around in time with a seamless alacrity. The economy of storytelling is staggering, given how the breadth and the depth of the tale are both vast, specific, vivid, heartfelt... it’s a deep kiss and a punch to the solar plexis and I am so glad I read it.

O, how I love a good apocalypse! This one's just getting started, but the play also has other things I love: smart people, bureaucracy, science and culture! And best of all, the characters have dimension! An investigation is in progress but it leads to unexpected admissions and even impactful lessons learned. As they face the certainty of a rather grave future, Yancey again instills his play with a bright hope in the deep darkness. Even in that darkness, this effervescent piece did my heart an otherworld of good!

An elegant and concise sci-fi drama illustrating what's at the root of everything wrong in the world, namely institutionalized ignorance. Yancey shows us a savvily defiant teacher called to task over a subversive math problem. The power struggle is palpable and infuriating. Meanwhile, two normal girls simply observe the changes in the world around them, unaware that their planet is in a show but certain freefall. The play infuses doom with hope, and pays tribute to the beauty of their world and ours. Much like the math teacher, THE MATH LESSON is a sublime protest. A genuinely important short play!

I love a horror story that not only celebrates its tropes but also has characters who recognize them. On a deeper level, the play illustrates how horror instills a willing suspension of disbelief in its audience to the point where the audience collectively chooses to allow itself to feel seared. That's possibly one reason why the piece works so well. People react realistically and therefore hilariously to an initially ridiculous threat and hold onto cynicism UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE!!! It gradually goes from creepy to scary to "oh my God there's no escape" and leaves you haunted. Loved it!

This filthy play deserves to be slapped! Hard! On its bare ass! Oh yeah it does!!!
Lawing, for lack of of any other expressions I desire to use, goes surprisingly deep in a few quick thrusts about kink, friendship, marriage, and fantasy. What seems like dirty wish fulfilment is really a concise examination of a pleasure based subculture, its aspirations and disappointments, and best of all how it celebrates what embarrasses it because of course it would. And it's fucking funny.

Small communities are made up of people who in turn know a lot about the other people in their small community. In between, some of those people form smaller sub-communities, driven by a shared interest. Or two.

What begins as a cute little tale about a fledgling local feature writer and an adorable quilting circle soon reveals itself to be something darker and lovelier. There's plenty of pathos and surprise in its ten quick pages. The characters are colorful and the story has a depth that defies its initial quaintness by weaponizing it.