Recommended by Scott Sickles

This play is a miracle of structure and character. It unfolds like an elegant fan, each side telling different perspectives of a complicated story that converges as it refolds. A sexy, daring burlesque noir.

Also, Stage Kitten! (She kittens the stage.)

It's a rare and wonderful thing to find a play that's equal parts adorable and uncomfortable while being utterly daring! Two actors perform a love scene on camera for a director. What's ingenious is that while the scene they're performing depicts a highly inappropriate encounter, the actors and director themselves are utterly appropriate and professional while doing so. But do lines eventually get blurred? What is permissible for the sake of art? A funny, uncomfortable, thought-provoking piece!

WE ARE A MASTERPIECE is The Play We Need Now about the beginning of the Great Gay Plague, in 1982/1983 when no one knew anything, prejudice surfaced without shame in people we thought were noble, and gay men stopped dying by the hundreds and started dying by the thousands. It reminds us that a disease that's largely manageable today once seemed unstoppable.

Tiny battles and almost imperceptible explosions build and build through characters as real as our loved ones fighting insurmountable odds and the petty tyrannies of their community. The play succeeds in being political by being unfailingly, deeply personal.

While I admit I’m predisposed to like any play where someone cries out “You lie!,” this was special. Fun and festive then profoundly heartfelt. It’s a play that will stay with you long after you read it. Producers: it’s a ten-minute play worth the large cast! Be fearless!

A primal, breathtaking thrill ride! Read it aloud! You’ll have a blast!

No one writes sisters quite like Jenny Lane. Or families. They are, as the best stage families are, unique and universal. Even the most lofty or pretentious or enigmatic characters are grounded and down-to-earth; they are real people. (And the ones that already "live in the real world" are refreshingly direct.) They speak a poetic truth and then zing each other with sharp realities. Long story short, this is a terrific play... not just about sisterhood but about accountability, expectation and disillusionment. It's also insanely funny.

I thought this would be about Facebook's current data scandal but it's about something so much more important, even more important than social media addiction (which it addresses). This monologue, which is beautifully observed quite funny, tackles the risks of sharing seemingly benign personal information online. I don't want to reveal more than that. Its attention to family and character detail makes it a great choice for auditions and performance.

This play is equal parts funny and gorgeous! Coming from a family whose default setting is gallows humor, I'm a sucker for stories about grief that are also funny. This piece captures the petty territorialness of mourning as well as the need to believe and even control our concepts of the afterlife. Two sisters, a representationalist/spiritualist and a literalist/pragmatist discuss their parents' postmortem existence now that mom has finally "followed" their interaction sums up every ridiculous, testy, absurd and ultimately freeing conversation siblings have during fresh grief. Seriously, I had flashbacks. This is a gem.

Reading this monologue was like opening up my journal (if I kept a journal) and discovering my subconscious had written cruelly honest comments in it while I slept! Actually a dialogue between a gay man of a certain age (which I'm not anymore) and the part of his psyche that knows what's good for him and is done putting up with excuses, SLEEPYHEAD is a tight, funny, exquisitely detailed monologue about being your own worst enemy... and your own best friend who gets to tell the unvarnished truth for whatever good it may do. Highly entertaining! (And a little embarrassing!)

Phillie's Trilogy is three coming of age stories in one about a boy and the man he becomes. It perfectly captures how our friends and family resonate from childhood into our later lives. It's a roller coaster of torment, forgiveness, disappointment, and surprising tenderness. Early on, it also deals frankly which childhood sexuality: what we long for before we understand longing and how we experiment before we understand our bodies. A lovely piece.