Recommended by Scott Sickles

There’s a writing rule of thumb: show your characters at the top of their game encountering circumstances they need their skills to overcome. Notice “at the top of their game” does not necessarily imply “good at what they do,” just that they’re doing their best with that they have.

Feriend gives us two lovable idiots who really are trying. Oh how they try! They have a plan, they adapt to circumstances, and it’s all just bad!!!

Fortunately, Marianne the docent is there! Not fortunate for them but for us. She’s the best unseen hero/antagonist ever!

“I didn’t get really lazy until the end.”
BEEN THERE!!!

I don’t see this introspection as lazy, though. It’s an honest, forgiving, and pragmatic look at the creative and emotional toll of cranking out 28 plays in 28 days. A lot of the playwrights who did this (or something similar) will empathize with this piece and/or find solace in it.

What’s especially lovely is Heyman’s compassion not only for himself and his characters, but the compassion he allows his characters to return to him. No fingerpointing or derision. Just camaraderie in the battle of creation.

Blevins has miraculously taken one of the dumbest antisemitic comments ever and turned it into a sharp, funny play about identity, expectation, and the purity and practicality of one’s motives. It holds people accountable for the actions they commit not only on their own behalf but at the behest of nations. It asks important questions, starting with “if Jews had space lasers, how indiscriminately should they be used against antisemites?” I’m all for zapping fascists, but this play makes you work when responding to moral hypotheticals. The characters are also people not positions, which enhances the overall humanity.

While ADHD manifests with a spectrum of symptoms, those with a creative and/or academic bent will feel this one in your synapses.

It’s quite meta to read this in between bouts of creative hyperfocus during screensaver-brain time. In fact, I’m in the middle of a show on Netflix which means I had stopped time already, then paused the stoppage to check Facebook, came across Deb’s post, put a pin in Facebook to read the play and write this recommendation.

That’s at least three temporal universes in play right now!

So basically, what Deb said.

Franky Gonzalez is a humble man and superlative dramatist, with a poetic soul and a heart the exact size (and shape) of a giant limited addition Chicken McNugget pillow! Every play is a spirited symphony of language and passion. When the orchestra is a trio of call center working stiffs you bet your sweet ass the tension's gonna crescendo in an allegro of accusations, refusals, furry references and a 69 joke or two until shit gets fucked and even if you see what's coming, you're gonna hold your fucking breath til you piss your goddamn pants! Sheer poetry!!!

We don’t hear a lot about The Quilt these days. We live in a world where HIV is not an automatic death sentence. But once upon a time, it pretty much was. HIS STORY reminds us of that, of the monument to the loved ones that were lost and the love that went with them. Cole doesn’t tug at our heartstrings so much as trust the story her speaker is telling to land with the audience that, for however many reasons, needs to hear it. In a way, it’s an extension of the very monument it commemorates.

Unrequited love is bad enough. But when the recipient of your love loves receiving it without returning it… They inevitably want to stay friends. But you’re not their friend, you’re their entree.

I want to shake Lane because I’ve been Lane, enough times to know when someone openly flies their red flags, it’s only so you can hide them on their behalf. Mick shines searchlights on his. Alas, Lanes don’t easily leave their Micks.

Heyman captures this toxicity in anmber and honesty, taking us from trap to turning point.

A gutpunch!

Evan Baughfman, how dare you?

How dare you take the seed of what could have been a one-joke sketch and nurture it into ten short fast minutes about SO SO MUCH???

But you did, didn't you?

And now we have a simple, straightforward trunk – a man tripping in the woods – that branches out into questions of life, love, feeling, memory, consent, touch, the vicissitudes of time and impermanence, the nature of monuments and the monuments in nature, and SHOES!

This is a masterwork of narrative economy, philosophical expanse, and good old fashioned warmth.

Like a great hug.

Here I sit, slack jawed and mouth agape (which happens when one's jaw is slack) in awe of the sight I just beheld! Not the transformative moose lips but the words that transported me into the world of Daisy, Josh, and unbridled discovery! Kudos to Haas in creating a truly unique narrative from what looks like a familiar scenario that instantly and relentlessly surprises and delights! [INSERT MOOSE CALL HERE!]!!!

Shivers…

Hot, HOT shivers…

the play is like…

It’s as if…

As if anxiety was an animal…

Blind but with a keen sense of smell…

Or radar…

As if depression were contagious…

Airborne…

Persistent.

First there’s the unease…

Then the tension…

Then the desperation…

Then the hopelessness…

Finally, the hopelessness AND the desperation AND the tension AND the hot HOT SHIVERS!

AND THEN…

And then.

End of Play

Read it if you dare