Recommended by Scott Sickles

Roll out your Southern accent and take FIRE for a spin!

Miss Ella is full of good advice and even better intentions, but her recommended course of action may prove difficult to follow in the moment. It's probably advice she herself ignored – weighted with wisdom and experience, even a hint of sorrow amidst her strength.

Lermond gives Miss Ella's speech a natural, eloquent flow that makes you want to say more when you speak the words. It's almost a pity that the monologue is so short. But it stops at the perfect moment. They point is made.

The groans come as often as the guffaws in this experiment gone horribly, horribly right! A cavalcade of terrible puns, uncertain malapropisms, and cheap sight gags, this delightfully silly mash-up is a great read and would be hilarious to stage. Somebody hurry and do that!

A perfect example of why directors should never cross out the stage directions. (Seriously, stop doing that or we'll sic Maria on you and you don't want that. Read this to find out why!)

A water cooler conversation like no other, the surface unpleasantries provide a necessary panacea to a deluge of unwanted sympathy. Sometimes, you just need miserable people to be miserable, for your sake and theirs.

Best of all, I want to know more about Maria and Ginny! I want to know just how unpleasant things will get for many years to come!

A perfect example of economic world-building (both in words and practical expense), Martin gives is a hopefully far-distant future of post-apocalyptic education. The childlike wonder of the students and the casual prim concerns of the teacher provide a candy-coated panorama of sorrow about how the life we currently know can be so blithely discussed in historic terms. Then the candy coating wears off and it's a punch in the solar plexus.

A great scene for children, especially nerdy ones.

And for a nerdy adult. Simply a great scene.

Anyone who has passed on an artistic directorship to a successor knows this feeling.

I kid. Sort of. Anyway...

There is no better reaction to a play than an audible gasp or an audible exhalation. This play evoked one and then the other.

Cross constructs a complex scenario infused with an inevitably rivaling death itself. It's a battle of vision and promises with no way to guarantee the treaty reached will be honored. Faith is both necessary and ultimately irrelevant. One of the most elegant single-page plays you'll encounter, certainly on the subject of legacy and death. Gorgeous!

What a swell party this is!

A tight adaptation that's also a sharp critique of how entitlement blinds the privileged to profoundly destructive acts of nature. But how sorry can you feel for people who can't be bothered to avoid a plague like it's a plague!

Blithely funny then bone-crawlingly creepy, this play is great for virtual theater (how I saw it), would be doubly effective on stage, and perhaps exponentially effective as an immersive experience! (Somebody, do that!)

Cross has allowed for great freedom in casting, so go to town! Oh wait, you can't! There's a plague...

Jesus Christ, that was funny!

That's it's. That's the rec.

How dare you, Vivian Lermond???

People! Playwright Lermond has had the audacity to look into MY FUTURE and depict exactly how *I* will react if a certain question looms on a nearby horizon! I'm sure many of you will also feel she has unfairly called you out on responses you haven't even had yet even though you absolutely will say exactly the same thing when the time comes!

And to present it in such a sharp, funny way... well, it's flattering but it doesn't sugar-coat the truth in its painful accuracy.

So again, I ask... HOW DARE YOU???

A truly horrific cycle of events, this monologue acknowledges the separation of body and mind as well as its unfortunate and undeniable fusion. So many of the speaker's insecurities read like a universal indictment – terrors we all go through, and rather than bond us, the unity of those terrors manifests a collective shame. If only it stopped there. SHE has a disease: one filled with pain and embarrassment that feeds on itself and her anguish. This monologue is a powerful and terrifying minute, both relatable and horrific.

If only the gays were the gatekeepers to Heaven! I mean, it would make sense given all the pearls and judgment...

If there were such a gate, I would want to arrive at this one! Gore Vidal and Truman Capote! One could listen to them for eternity and not have to say a word. (How would one compare!) Poor "Princess" Lee is about to find out. Just the right amount of bitchiness and disapproval (and there's plenty of both) gives this contretemps a heavenly kick!

And after all, isn't a halo basically a tiara?