Recommended by Michael Goodwin Hilton

What do we make of old roles and gimmicks that seem outdated but also essential? How do we persevere with our passions even when the world is insisting that we become someone else? These are some of the questions I asked myself while reading this short, delightful play. Vance imbues both her characters with charm and dignity, begging a second look at professions that we've long since deemed either corny or frightening. The reader takes the opportunity to reflect on what keeps him/her going despite what other people might think. Read and produce, even for those with serioius coulrophobia!

As harrowing as a Greek myth, as resonant as an Irish folk ballad, "The Widow of Tom's Hill" restores an expansive and compelling lyrical vision to the American stage. Merilo writes about the dark cracks of our history and society, people and incidents long since forgotten who inhabit the blind alleyways of our collective memory. In so doing, he challenges us to find beauty anywhere and everywhere. This play will enchant, disturb, and astonish you. You'll feel it in your bones like the raw coastal air.

An intelligent, sensitive short that stokes the embers of memory about events that must never be forgotten or misunderstood. Written with thoughtful and fluid dialogue, this play is an ideal conversation starter for young and mature audiences alike.

A haunting, gorgeous short play. Merilo manages, in the space of only a few pages, to illustrate an entire world, creating incredible depth with a few spare and masterful strokes, leading the audience around twists and turns which end up revealing both horror and great humanity. A piece to be read and staged often!

A fascinating short play! Yarchun captures the tenderness and devastation of a long-term breakup through poignant and mesmerizing symbolism. We experience here all the restlessness and redundancy of two people who have exhausted their hope of decisively communicating with one another, who become surrounded by the echoes of their verbosity only to then discover a means - through activity and magic - of letting go and moving on. This play is truly "a poem standing up", as Lorca observed, and dives off the page at every turn, demanding and deserving to be staged and seen often.

This piece strikes a special nerve. As someone who has Downs Syndrome in his family, and who believes passionately in promoting awareness of the important gifts and abilities of the disabled, I cannot recommend this enough. Wyndham succeeds in empowering his character without any condescension or undue sentimentality. He calls forth a man from the margins to speak on behalf of those who are at risk of being forgotten entirely. The monologue is a triumph of both attitude and execution and should be performed in countless theaters across the country to help showcase the talent of so many unknown actors.

I could try explaining why this play should be read, though honestly you'd enjoy reading it much more. The lives of Merilo's outcasts are deeply American - lonely, restless, tormented -, ruled by a massive violence that threatens to annhilate but also salvage them. He has the grizzled assuredness of Shepard, with a poetic resonance all his own. This is a powerhouse; this is a serious American play from a serious American playwright. I don't think I'll ever forget the girl on the mountain.

So, part of why I had to read this was because I had just finished re-reading Don DeLillo's book of the same title and was actually struck by an unsuspecting symmetry between the two: a wry twist on suburban elitism, both amused and outraged, a sense of the religious attraction to merchandise and supermarkets. In only a few minutes, Martin manages to eliminate all the "noise" which might otherwise drown the story with message and gives to us instead a gem of satire that wounds and wows in the same breath.

What fascinates me about this piece is that while it appears to center on a writer's failing powers, even according to her own assessment, it highlights the deceptive triumph of a mind so adept at language that quotidian words - "tides", "spoon" - take on stature and mystique. Wanda feels trapped by that which once liberated her, but perhaps what's actually taken place is a kind of transcendence to a state of mind through which the basest observation of an object or experience can yield its intrinsic beauty. Do we witness a collapse or a breakthrough? A powerful, thought-provoking monolgue!

This was the play I needed to read this week. Femia has found a way to write about the AIDS epidemic in the 21st century: post-ironic, deeply personal. She proves herself to be not only playwright but magician, conjuring those from the margins - nurses, janitors, artists - to tell about those who died in the margins. "Choose to remember" Ryan exhorts us. Without question, this mesmerizing play will be remembered for a long time to come.