Recommended by Lee R. Lawing

Animals are always so fun to read about when they are allowed to speak on stage and Supersnout is no different. Cafarella offers us a bond between one woman and her dog Andre who as a sleuth greater then Inspector Gadget! Funny and touching and never a dull moment, Supersnout! lives up to his title!

Birthdays are a hard thing for a lot of people and there's always those "Just forget me on my day," and others that go all out with excitement. Deep down I think we a little pleased when we are remembered. It's become part of our upbringing and culture to have the one day that is all "ours." Gatton provides us just one such person and one such situation and it makes us remember how important it is to celebrate the little things and just let someone know you're thinking about them on their special day.

The Delay packs a lot into its short time-frame. Suicide is always hard to read about, but Gometz does it from the point of the trains themselves and we start to better understand the truth impact of what's happened as the M and E trains are forced to pause in their day to day rush to really grasp was has happened on the tracks ahead. Seize every day to just pause and reflect. This gem has made me do just that.

A play about sex and love and how the two can completely be separate from the other and in Alan's case all the better. Guidroz's play caught me by surprise and that's always a great feeling when reading or seeing a new play. This little ten minutes is worth more than any full length in what it presents and the outcome that is reached.

Great absurdist piece of theater and funny as hell. McLachlan pulls together so much in this play about reality vs. fantasy, making your own way or staying the path, and questioning everything or accepting of everything that life throws at you. And all of this around a landmine which was just brilliant.

So many emotions are touched on by the play. There were some funny laugh-out-lines in this beautifully written ode to one man's attempt to move past his abusive past and also try to ask that age-old question, why his father didn't love him, and again, this world of Toxic men needs to come to end and I feel that the character Ryan is like Detroit and able to change and move past the abuse and not carry it forward in the cycle.

Lee paints a perfect picture of toxic men and the women who sadly still fall for them, but Frannie is not just some sad woman who hasn't learned anything while falling for her version of toxic. Smart and funny go together ver well in this play.

Fantasy vs Reality. We experience these bouts of realization quite often in our world and Hazori gives us a little gem of one with Santa Claus is Coming. What I like best of this is the hope that is present with Jessica and like a child, she stiill holds on to that at the end even when her fantasy has crashed around her and she strikes out still waiting to fulfill her dreams and get more than a lump of coal in her stocking.

These men who think they have the upper hand in a relationship just because they are men. Who are just angry men and nothing but children and who shouldn't even be allowed to have children. This is gut-wrenching monologue which defines the cycle of abuse so clearly that you want to hold your hand out to pull these people up out of their abusive relationship and help them find a light they so deserve.

I used to love the number that was thrown about how many gay people there were. They used to say there's about 1 out of 10 who are gay. But I always felt like there's a lot more of them around then we will ever know because religion has messed so many of us up and then there's society's rules we play in marriage and relationships and the expectations that one person can fit every need for another--so not true. Larson's play is about keeping secrets and how lonely and damaging they can be for the players.