Recommended by Scott Sickles

Leo, like the titular afikoman, is Jewish, broken, and hidden away as a family searches for him on Pesach. The hiding is of his own volition. And within him is hidden still more: past trauma, losses, resentments -- a helplessness in watching a toxic history repeat itself while everyone else makes the best of it. Well... not everyone. There's the other human afikomen in the room: his niece Rivka. The bond they share is quite profound, the family they share drowning in good intentions without realizing they need air. It's a gorgeous setpiece, theatrical, heartfelt and powerful.

YUP!

Yes, indeed, this is the most accurate poetic expression (as it were) of how the mind and soul churns our digested life experienced and traumas and threatens to reveal them. Once revealed, is it still ours or will someone mop it up or flush it down?

Of course, once you puke you feel better. But the wooziness and swaying, the reaching and heaving, the gagging and spittle… that’s PROCESS!

I’m so glad this trauma made it to the page and one day I hope to see it come out of someone’s mouth.

War is an infinitesimally intricate tapestry and the military an impossibly complicated loom filled with moving parts and threads of fate.

Boyle gives us the smallest of glimpses into a single decision made by an insignificant player on the precipice of history. And it's everything. There's a lot of information packed in this monologue, details civilians like yours truly would not (and did not) know. The story is a concise tale of "how I ended up here" that reflects the experience of so many boys, now long dead.

A powerful monument to Corpsmen. And an origin story.

Chaos is mentioned. The chaos that is about to happen to the trauma team about to treat a female POTUS and her First Gentleman. But the chaos that goes unmentioned hangs over this piece like a storm cloud starting to funnel: the chaos that the nation and the world must now be in.

And yet we focus. The Chief focuses on the incoming, gets their staff to focus on the incoming, not only that it's about to happen but what will happen when it does. And it is RIVETING!!!

An adrenaline-fueled high-tension glimpse into the eye of devastation.

“I'm told God doesn't make junk. … But God didn't make the internet.”

Damn.

This powerful monologue, steeped in vulnerability and open as a heart can be, gingerly looks inward at its own faulty brain. The description of the mind having two channels – one that’s normal/typical/usual and one that’s, well, not – holds a profound resonance for those of us with similar struggles.

The struggle is not only internal. Remember, the internet is involved. Boyle’s speaker handles online darkness with amazing grace I myself do not possess. The grace is a gift to us.

Lovely work!

An almost forensic account of the folly of late feminine youth (subsoecies: party girl). The music choices evocatively heighten the theatricality. Feeny-Williams imbues her narrator with a nostalgia that's unflinching, unapologetic, and without regret. If anything, there's a battle-worn optimism rising from the embers of tiny dresses, noise, and an estwhile hope that's vastly different than the hope that comes later on.

Ummmm... Dude...

This guy is the rambling definition of probable cause!

He's initially described as "concerned, tired, and like his mind is turning a little too hard" and that helps with the delivery! Dzubek has wisely broken the piece up into short paragraphs, allowing the reader/performer momentary beats to process where the speaker's mind is going (or trying to divert the police from). It reads aloud very smoothy while taking you on a journey that grows curiouser and curiouser. Is he sincere or is this a cover-up? We'll never know! And that's fantastic!

Of course this is what happened!

There have always been cops in the history of The Night Fagan Visited the Queen! THE CROWN did a lovely albeit optimistic imagining; it was fine.

But now… NOW THE TRUTH CAN BE TOLD!!!

Our brave little vampire bear has been away from us too long. His acolytes welcome his otherworldly return!

When recommending Ruben Carbajal’s work I’m often confronted by the same question: where to begin?

MYTH begins at the beginning of everything, takes us back to nothing, and ultimately brings us forward to now. It’s an extraordinary journey throughout the history of the universe, all in a one-page fireside sermon.

The narrative and imagery are staggering, even buy Carbajalian standards. There is a dark beauty throughout as well as beauty and horror in that darkness. That beauty and horror and darkness permeate our mundanities, from our DNA to the outer cosmos.

A transcendently beautiful piece of work.

What a great Christmas monologue! The stakes are positively Shakespearean as a seasonal usurper invades Benji's sacred domain!

Feeny-Williams masterfully delivers the backstory -nay... THE HISTORY of this series of invasions. Despite the antigonist being a non-anthropomorphized inanimate object that neither speaks nor moves, there are formidable obstacles and tactics for our antihero to overcome.

A delicious monologue for anyone whose every wanted to play a cat without dancing or singing, this is a true tour de force! Get a good sound designer and propmaster, and leap for that star atop the tree!

Merry Christmas, indeed...