Recommended by John Bavoso

It’s easy to see why Write This Way is so popular at queer theatre festivals. Hoke tackles serious issues surrounding gender identity and sexuality and the way we discuss them through a humorous and meta lens, while creating interesting roles for trans/non-binary actors. Bravo!

I love the way Stubbles’ mind works. An anti-bullying parable like you’ve surely never seen before, this would be such a weird and wonderful one-act for teen actors to tackle!

Both funny and heartbreaking, this monologue packs so much about self-loathing, insecurity, and superficiality within the gay community in just a few pages. This would be a great challenge for a talented actor.

I was lucky enough to see a reading of this thought-provoking play last year, and I still think about it often. Advocating for intersectionality without feeling like a lecture, Mauceri's script reinforces that no issues are merely black and white and that even the most "woke" among us needs to look critically at ourselves and how our actions affect others. I would love to see a full production of this play!

Stories about the AIDS crisis are my emotional kryptonite, and WE ARE A MASTERPIECE is no exception. Femia has filled this play with such beautiful, devastating, funny, heartbreaking, and human moments. And Joan is such a good role for a talented actor!

STUFF is a really visceral play that expertly externalizes interior disfunction. The dialog is quick, funny, and brutal. Some really challenging and complicated roles for actors in this one!

Wow. I love this innovative play, which makes the audience laugh and cry, wryly winking at them all the while. Many plays begin as a thought experiment in a playwright’s mind, but I haven’t encountered one before that dramatizes the process in such a delightfully metatheatrical way. Highly recommended!

This play had me hooked (and repulsed) from the first few moments and didn’t let go. Despite all the darkness, the script is funny as hell, and a powerful, theatrical representation of the anxiety so many people are feeling these days. Aura is a GREAT role for a talented actor. I hope to see this on stage some day!

I’m a big fan of Thomas’s work at Elle, and that, combined with the synopsis of this play, got me excited to read it. And I was not disappointed! TIME IS ON OUR SIDE asks big, important questions about history’s role in the present and who gets to tell what stories, and wraps them in dialog that made me literally laugh out loud. I know these characters, and I want to be their friends and live in their world long after the play ends. I hope I get to see a production of this script someday!

Brutal and engrossing, I haven’t read anything that’s caused such a physical response in me in a while. I can only imagine how powerful it will be to see staged. Wellman’s characters are fully formed and you can’t help pitying them on one page and being revolted by them on the next. This one will stick with me for a while.