Recommended by Scott Sickles

As intimate as a journal entry, BOOM provides a shared experience of grief and loss as endured in a teeming crowd. Intimacy sans privacy. Privacy that manifests like a miracle from its own absence. Frankie is alone in a holiday crowd, untethered yet secure, held up because it’s impossible to fall. Yet unutterably alone.

Rose conveys this with extraordinary balance, complexity and emotion. The details are striking. The acknowledgment about the things we never liked about the person we lost, things we suddenly can’t live without because now we have to.

Reading this was an honor.

Harrowing.

The most potent metaphors and symbols are grounded in reality and circumstance. The line, the masks, how some people are trapped on one path while others can come and go as they please… Rose grounds all of it in a death march. That march itself is grounded in real world fear.

The aforementioned masks set this piece apart most. Execution as entertainment is a long-standing dystopian trope, but execution as an amplification of culture… there’s a self-serving vulgarity to it, like bedazzling an executioner’s hood. Something shiny/pretty to justify the ugly, adding a profoundly disturbing dimension.

This hit my heart like an atom bomb - the tiniest particles of life split apart causing a chain reaction of truths, memories, and misunderstanding. What Eileen holds onto during the last moments of her life likewise fuel the power of what she’s giving away. The lessons of love that she may have failed to pass down to her son, but insists he pass down to his daughter. The forgotten transgressions of childhood eclipsed by an indelible crush that’s lingered for almost a century. Mesmerizing and filled with truth until even after the last breath.

I keep thinking of this play in terms of dissection.

An autopsy of memory.
A vivisection of life.
Surgery for the soul.

There will never be a more frank, personal play written. About anything. Ever.

One of the most important things is says about sexual assault/abuse is that we frequently don't realize it's happening. Or that it's happened.

Sex and touch are conflated with love.
Love is subsequently confused by and excised from those necessities.

Most importantly, FUKT is a brutality honest testament of survival, and celebration of the lives we build, after lifetimes of destruction.

Speak out!

A truly good send-up is ideally a funny version of the object of its imitation. This is the Galaxy Quest of Lovecraftian monologues. Suffused with dark humor throughout, it perfectly replicates the overly description prose of Lovecraft characters in peril. At the same time, it’s deeply unsettling and an acting tour de force.

ANYONE AUDITIONING FOR A HORROR PLAY SHOULD CONSIDER THIS!

As a bonus, Soucy provides an image near the end that is a hilarious as it is grotesque. A sick twisted delight!

First of all, anyone planning to write their first ten-minute play needs to read this; it’s textbook perfect. The exposition is active without spoon-feeding the backstory to us. The characters are immediately recognizable and grow with the scene. It’s structurally perfect.

Beyond being exemplary, the play is also exceptional! The use of details and nuances, conversational resonances, the underlying emotions… that’s a gift writers must cultivate and clearly Accuardi has that gift in spades!

This is a gorgeous two-hander, ideal for any festival, with an especially spectacular role for a mature female actor. Loved it!

Oh, the ravages of old age.

A scenario often used for comic effect (why, I do not know) is given appropriately serious treatment here. Which isn’t to say the piece is without humor. There’s a light touch to this potentially lethal situation that emphasizes what has and could have been lost.

So it’s come to this!!!

Dakutis sends up emoji culture in a way that’s as funny to the audience as it is baffling to one of his characters - the sane one. It also illustrates what can happen when friendships for whatever reason go far afield and randomly reconnect. Wavelengths change over time and distance and the realization can be disappointing. Especially when… well, read it and see!

A great role for a mine and a “straight man.”

Imagine the disappointment! The promise to be the next Holden Caulfield only to be relegated to a character no one’s ever going to hear of in a book no one will ever read, not only because it’s never going to be published but because even if it were, it would be utterly forgettable trash.

Unlike living human beings, Bobby can’t set forth on his own destiny. Let him be a reminder that the rest of us are not trapped in on meandering pages that lead nowhere. Williams uses a comic conceit to voice profound existential rage!

Oh the anguish of necessity! Yet while Ares and Mars must battle it out for supremacy, even in a duel whose outcome feels preordained, perhaps it’s good that these two brothers in arms did not rule over war together. Cross makes the global person and the epic intimate in this sublimely complex and touching goodbye scene.