Recommended by Scott Sickles

This monologue is hard to classify. Masterpiece, while accurate, is too broad. Stream of consciousness is apt to a point because the consciousness in question is acutely aware of SO MUCH; it's less a stream and more a flash flood. A hurricane of time leveling a landscape, ending in a beautiful, placid eye.

Line by line, thought by thought, word by word, it's elegant jazz. Cameron captures decades of life in a singular moment, all of it urgent, critical, catastrophic, with nothing to be done. The elegiac notes it ends on are simple, true to life, tragic, and unspeakably beautiful.

Oh the PTSD flashbacks! Any young person looking for their first job or any not-young person who once looked for a job but blocked it out of their memory will relate to this piece down to their bones. Vansant's clever use of a mom and masks is a perfect personification of how parental voices help screw up a situation we're perfectly capable of screwing up on our own without their imaginary input! A job search is always dehumanizing but this play triumphs over it with its instance upon even a flawed humanity.

Bonus: I now know what Riverboat Red is!

Queer people often endure a "second" adolescence, experiencing dating/romantic initiations well after our peers. Add a neurodivergence: reality is experienced differently, subtext is lost, manipulations go unnoticed, and we're easy marks.
Osmundsen captures Bob's belated coming of age in riveting detail, heartbreaking because we recognize Alex's machinations while Bob can't. And it's a feeding frenzy.

Anyone who's given their heart to someone who then treated it as a food source will feel like their diary is being read aloud.

It's also a testament to resilience and growing up, even when our own brains make us bigger targets. Bravo!

What a question! It's the kind of question you ask when you've stepped in something wonderful... but only a little of it. Is also the question you ask every time love ends... or takes a pause.

In this play, it's both.

Osmundsen captures the complexities of mixed neurodiverse relationships, familial and romantic, through well-drawn characters who represent different points of view yet are never mere stand-ins for those perspectives. These are fully fledged human beings each of whom we can empathize with regardless of how our brains and hearts work.

The ending in particular is sublime.

Gay parents have the same hopes for their kids as straight parents but their fears come from a very different place. Vaughan gives us a deeply personal monologue that ultimately captures a crucial moment in time while effortlessly embracing us with a familial love story rich in detail and heart.

Despite being direct address, it flows with the ease and intimacy of friendship. The backstory always feels active and important and the payoff is sublime and powerful.

A damn lovely piece of writing and a blessing to perform out loud. Try it, you'll love it.

This play hit close to home: the gay straight friendship with unrequited crush, the body acceptance and insecurity, the spectrum of masculinity, and how it physicalizes inspiration in the face of faulty neurology.

But it's the story that took hold of my heart. There's a deep platonic love between Paul and Alonso that is enviable and dear. All of the relationships are as realistic and detailed as the 1460 titular sketches. And it truly captures the wrecking ball decision making people are capable of in their 20s.

It's as comfortable and familiar as it is frank and uncompromising.

A super-quirky twisty-and-turny, home invasion long-con neo-noir that'll keep your head spinning. Lies pile on top of deceptions, hard truths are wielded like scalpels and cudgels, and once Henry realizes he's trapped, it's too late keep the wolves at bay. Outwitted and outmatched, with one hilariously useless ally, he needs to bide his time while bearing witness to his girlfriend's twisted relationship with her so-called brother as they mess with his head. Henry's no saint and after a while even he has to wonder if he deserves this. But even cuffed to a dumpster, it's a wild ride.

.. -- .--. --- ... ... .. -... .-.. -.-- / . .-.. . --. .- -. - .-.-.-
Translated: Impossibly elegant.

Beautiful in its simplicity. Its intellectual approach belies a great emotional wallop. At first a series of facts that, when put in context, opens up a shared life of love and regret.

Miraculous.
Translated: -- .. .-. .- -.-. ..- .-.. --- ..- ... .-.-.-

Leave it to Nora Louise Syran to find (literally) universal joy in the discovery of one's own solipsism.

As someone who contemplates the beauty of celestial objects and the inconstancy of one's location on an ever-moving planet hurtling through space so that from moment to moment we are never where we were and will never be there again, this monologue was a warm arrow to my heart, a sparkler in my brain, and a salve for my weary soul. [Miranda Jonte's Back Porch Theatre recitation captures all this magic.]

And talk about great last lines...

Bravo!

Dissertations could be written about this play.

Schwarz's wisely chooses Rosalie Wells as her subject, rather than tormentor Mary Tilford, who would only regret getting caught. Rosalie, vulnerable and sensitive, owns the consequences of her actions, even though they were coerced, and questions why the lies themselves were so damaging when they were only about love. She's a child; greater implications escape her.

Schwarz perfectly captures the homophobia of the time, casual condemnation even as Rosalie's mother attempts fair judgment. Complex cycles of victimization are on vivid display. Schwarz inlays a faint hope that lessons in acceptance can be learned.