Recommended by Doug DeVita

We should all write a play as good as Vince Gatton's BETTER. That's all I have to say, except maybe I wish I'd written it.

This stunning solo play is one of the most powerful, persuasive, and painfully heartbreaking cries for gun control I've ever read. Intensely personal in its approach, Miller's script is a gut-wrenching exploration of the after effects of needless loss on a grieving father's psyche, and a tour de force for the actor performing it. Read it. Produce it. Listen to it.

JB Miller's dark farce is by turns hilarious, horrifying, and heartbreaking, sometimes all three in a single line of dialogue. Miller deftly explores what happens when parents get involved in their children's squabbles, and his set up is so natural that you willingly follow along as everything gets more and more complicated; suddenly you realize you've fallen down the rabbit hole into a kind of psychosexual wonderland. You don't quite know how you got there, but you don't mind because it's all so wild, weird, and wonderfully funny. Bullseye!

Osmundsun writes exquisitely conversational exposition; his dialogue doesn't just "get the job done," it tells several stories all at once, it hints at deeper layers that are mined with cutting precision, and it turns what could in lesser hands be considered political "soap-boxing" into a passionate plea for understanding. Beautifully handled all the way.

About as sharply incisive a play about loss, denial, grief, and despair as one can get, Lamedman still imbues this script with a lightness that makes it all the more compelling – and haunting. A deeply moving, truly gorgeous work.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
— John Keats

And Lermond’s touching ode to later life change, while not in the least having anything to do with a Grecian Urn, is all about the truth in beauty and the beauty in truth. A deceptively simple piece, and simply wonderful from its first page to its last.

Once again, Ladva walks that line between specificity and universality, and once again she gives us a delicately balanced, beautifully heartfelt work. Oh, how I'd love to see this performed; the two actresses required will have a field day with such rich, emotionally layered characters to play, and the play itself will seem all the more deeply rewarding as it connects with its audiences on every level. A play brought to life because of the COVID crisis, but one that stands on its own, simultaneously timely and timeless.

Delving even further into the fractured world of his title character, Swenson hints at even worse trials this child has to endure, and again does it with razor sharp acuity. Completely horrifying and heartbreaking.

Gut-wrenching in both its horrifying specificity and heartbreaking innocence, Swenson brings an acutely trained eye to the subject of child abuse and gives us a title character you can’t help but want to save. At times hard to read, but oh, so necessary as it brings you right into the mindset of an abused child with cutting truth.

Gatton takes a baseball bat and runs amok with our emotions. By turns funny and horrifying, this gem is ultimately a heartbreakingly beautiful delineation of a sibling relationship in which each sibling has the other’s back, and the wherewithal to do what needs to be done. All the feels.