Recommended by Greg Lam

A funny and oddly touching imagining of the inner lives of the two Mars rovers, as personified by two human actors, searching for a purpose that may or may not be there on the seemingly barren rock to which they've been conscripted, and comradery amongst robots.

I heard this play read on the Parsnip Ship podcast, and it's my favorite of that series. A very chilling and not-quite-as-far-fetched-as-we'd-like scenario of the government using extraordinary means of coercion to alter the conversation on climate change to a way that suits them at a terrible human cost. The writing is disciplined and compelling, the characters distinct.

I saw this pretty genius sci-fi play at the Navigators Theater in New York as part of their Lift-Off Festival. A concise and amusing conceit of a human in an apocalyptic Earth stumbling upon the means to communicate with a low level invading alien. World building is something done seamlessly and entertainingly. Through the newly discovered form of communication, we see the things that they learn they share in common, and in what ways, ultimately, they differ.

A political satire first produced in the run-up to the 2016 election. Sadly, it's more relevant than ever! A searing indictment of right wing demagoguery by characters who are not living up to their preaching. It's a multimedia script, with visuals occasionally commenting on the action on stage. With that said, it's also very funny and adventurous and not just a one-sided polemic. Speaking with the playwright for my podcast, a surprising amount of the seemingly cartoonish demagogues was drawn from her own family upbringing.

This play is an episode of Boston Podcast Players (https://www...

An intriguing and beguiling play that uses a post-apocalypticish setting as the background to a fractured family drama. The sisters decay physically and mentally while the world falls apart around them. Having talked with the playwright, I never would have guessed that the starting point of writing this play was as a vehicle for featuring stage magic. This would be very interesting to see live.

This play will be featured in a future episode of Boston Podcast Players (bostonpodcastplayers.com)

This is a very engaging three person play in which a storied academic with declining faculties jibes with her latest assistant who is trying to get a foothold in academia herself. The writing is so precise and the voices of the characters are so very distinct. It wears its intellect on its sleeve but is still accessible on a character level. An actor's dream.

The Queen of Sad Mischance is featured on the December 2018 episode of the Boston Podcast Players podcast (https://www.bostonpodcastplayers.com/updates/2018/12/5/john-minigan)

A promising and fun take on the time travel genre. A teenaged girl about to embark on her grown up life gets a fast forward to her future and her past under the watch of the exasperated Traveller, learning about the consequences of her choices. The unique voice of the main character, which extends into the stage directions, gives the piece its breezy tone.
Hear an excerpt on the play with playwright interview here: https://www.bostonpodcastplayers.com/bpp-season1/

A fascinating reimagining of ancient history supposing a meeting and conflict between two great female leaders, pulling both figures out of the shadows of the famous men they are currently associated with. It's not post-modern but reads more like a newly discovered forgotten classic in its appoach. Hear an excerpt on the play with playwright interview here: https://www.bostonpodcastplayers.com/bpp-season1/

A backstage comedy from the birth of the stage. This cleverly droll take on the actor’s nightmare is full of deadpan hilarity.

As someone who writes sci-fi myself, I appreciate good world building and when the playwright manages to remember that the characters are fully formed people beyond the requirements of the sci-fi premise. Vaughn paints indelible characters with the barest of brush strokes, hurt survivors defined by their boundaries.