Recommended by Doug DeVita

Provocative. Hilarious. Surreal. Absurd. Pretentious. Satirical. It's "Dick Pix." If the traditional, well-made play is your thing, read this at your own peril, but should you take up the challenge, be prepared for a wild ride that will leave you shaken, bruised, questioning everything, and exhilarated from Daniel McCoy's risky, ballsy approach to gender identity and artistic integrity, and the sheer bizarre freshness of it all.

Gemma Cooper-Novack's "Break" is a a powerful and irresistible force of a play. Moving backwards in time, it nonetheless gains an ever-increasing forward momentum, mostly from Cooper-Novack's compellingly human characters and their heartbreaking story, but also because one becomes so invested in these woman and how they ended up, one has to find out how they began. Beautifully handled, all the way.

Tuesdays suck. Especially when a meteorite is hurtling toward Earth with the promise of wiping out all life. But when ya got only two minutes left on a terrible Tuesday, sipping a macchiato and reading Steven G. Martin's "It's an Espresso Drink with Foamy Steamed Milk" is great way to go out. With a smile on your face, and hopefully a foamy mustache.

James Armstrong's highly theatrical take on "A Christmas Carol," using only two actors (one playing Scrooge, and one playing Dickens playing all the other characters) is a work of genius, and will be a field day for the two performers given the opportunity to play with this play. I loved every single word and convention used to tell this familiar tale in a refreshing new way, and even more, I would love to see it staged. What fun!

All three characters in Nick Malakhow's "Emergency Contact" are damaged gay men, and how they negotiate the twists and turns of an ill-conceived and ill-fated one-night stand – instigated from a hook-up app – give the play an urgency that is palpable, often times darkly funny, and ultimately sadly hopeful.

Burdick's elegiac is by turns sweet, funny, melancholic, wistful, and ultimately hopeful. Covering a lot of emotional ground with concise elegance, "Sign Here For All That Remains" is a beautiful short play.

Aside from having one of the best titles EVER, this is a delightful short piece that anthropomorphizes dog behavior perfectly. As a dog owner, there isn’t a word Middleton gives Sam and Ben that I haven’t attributed to my own dog Max in similar circumstances. Funny, heartwarming, and spot-on. Woof!

The intimacy permeating every fiber of this play is intoxicating; Nick Malakhow has crafted a truly beautiful work from the tiniest of details, allowing one to feel a part of each character’s world, as well as part of the larger whole. I was drawn in right from the first lines, and read it straight through. A stunner.

Greg Burdick's "Room 27," a deliciously dark, existential riff on sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, is also a pointed social satire seriously spoofing fame, misspent youth, and death. It is also a piercing metaphor for the special hell in which creative individuals can live when they can't pursue the art that drives them. An unsettling work, but nonetheless a terrific one. And devilishly funny.

Mary Sue Price plays with time, place, and expectations in “The Schifferdecker Electric Park,” a deeply atmospheric ghost story in which other worlds collide with beautifully elliptical precision. Two great roles, wonderfully evocative writing, and I love the title!