Recommended by Scott Sickles

It's like TOM JONES on acid!!!

A shameless romp filled with literary mashups, diabolical intrigue, and inspired silliness, it's as though a deranged madman took an English lit syllabus hostage and had his way with it!

Powerful, complex, intense, and thought provoking, Rust on Bone uses its protagonist's method of immersive trauma counseling to take the audience through the subjective experiences of its characters' PTSD in this study of fear, race, and the subjectivity of truth. Whose memory can we trust? Can we trust our own? At what point are we safe from the experiences that nearly kill us? Are we ever? A haunting piece.

I confess: on several occasions I have described the entire plot of this play to people and each time I did, I cried. Doublewide is a profoundly moving, hysterically funny, sometimes brilliantly random, edge-of-your-seat suspenseful family story that occasionally makes you say "damn..." out loud.

Don't be fooled by the title. This is not a Killer-Joe-style white-trash-living-in-the-outskirts-of-the-underbelly-of-society yarn. Doublewide is an honest, unpretentious look at hard-working decent working-class folk striving for a better life. Marital, multi-generational, and societal dynamics seamlessly blend in a tapestry of wonderful characters. It's a gem that will split your sides and break your heart.

Harlowe is a bit of a theatrical miracle. We start out with a heavy, dark, poetic monologue from a woman (Harlowe) in a bathtub. This woman is in pain, real pain, pain she is aware of and can no longer feel. Then she is interrupted and suddenly Harlowe and the audience are thrust into a real world that's as hilarious as it is complex. Moving seamlessly in and out of her protagonist's thoughts and fears, Jenny Lane has written a beautiful latticework of familial need and insecurity as Harlowe and her brood verge ever closer to healing.

SAFE is a powerful piece about the multi-generational pervasiveness of homophobia told from the point of view of a woman whose past mistakes with a gay friend come back to haunt her decades later when she encounters similar prejudices and circumstances. The narrative presents a gripping puzzle that slowly reveals itself as the weight of her memories and regrets bear down on her. Eternally topical yet intimately personal, SAFE reminds us that bigotry and abuse can still hide within the most outwardly friendly people. The graveyard confrontation between two mothers is extraordinary.