Recommended by Doug DeVita

Weird, wonderful, and wildly funny. McBurnette-Andronicos' creative take on noir turns the genre upside down, and the laughs are non-stop. Dizzy, and delightful.

This deceptively simple work keeps peeling away at a mother/son relationship, and each layer reveals more complexity than meets the eye. A parent’s wants vs. a child’s needs are examined; and there’s no right or wrong: just two sides represented with unsparing honesty. It’s a quietly devastating work, but one that resolves beautifully, and just right.

Lia Romeo's crisply written jewel sparkles with poignant wit and achingly beautiful romance. A love story, a ghost story, a story about race relations, an older woman / younger man relationship... Romeo weaves these all together with effortless ease by finding and capitalizing on the universal humanity in her characters and their story. A truly winning little gem.

If the synopsis alone isn’t brilliant enough, it’s nothing compared to the actual play. What a smart, heartbreaking, hilarious, and profoundly witty spin on a comfortably familiar nursery rhyme, using unstable relationships, contemporary reliance on technology, and being tied to the digital world to tell its story. It is as mercurial as the changing winds which guide the titular clouds — and the work itself — into ever-changing shapes and moods, keeping one mesmerized and waiting to see what shape it takes next right up to it’s surprising, but inevitable conclusion. Terrific work.

The tension starts with the first line and rises exquisitely right up to the last. Johnson’s masterful script, based on true events, provides two actresses with fun, meaty roles, and audiences/readers with a deliciously taut experience.

I did not grow up in a household where baseball was ever a “thing,” but the four boys who lived next door were nuts about it, and the sounds of a game blaring through a transistor radio is as much a part of summer for me as long, soft twilights, lightening bugs, and the hum of cicadas. Williams captures all that, and so much more, in this lovely, lyrical piece in which a smart father imparts a few valuable lessons to his seemingly polar-opposite sons. Beautifully handled, all the way.

Kendra Augustin has written a richly textured period drama that transcends its time and setting to become a touching, beautifully written statement about the similarities – and marked differences – between a mother and daughter. No matter the characters and their concerns are and about Haitian royalty and their duties: their story is universal.

The fiercely creative theatricality of Romero's work here left me thinking "Goddamn, this is what I love about the possibilities of writing for the stage, and man, how I'd love to see this performed!"

A sizzling confrontation between two strong-willed women – one black and one white – that says so much about freedom and the responsibilities that come with it, both personal and universal. And as tightly written as it is to read, to hear two gifted actresses spitting our Johnson's crackling dialogue would make for an intense, riveting experience I'd love to have.

"So I'm supposed to piece together a life?" One devastating line that caps a devastating play. Lewis stings with bleak truths, yet she never loses sight of the humanity her characters are fighting so hard to maintain. A beautifully written work that took my breath away.