Recommended by Audrey Lang

A fantastic ensemble piece for young women that is both beautiful and tragic - just as its source material can be. Each character is a delightfully and intriguingly full person who I could gladly watch for far longer than the length of the play. And along with the brilliant way this play uses Sophocles' Antigone and creates something even bigger, I love that it challenges the notion of "the show must go on" and asks us if that is truly the healthiest mentality to promote.

I had the pleasure of seeing the Pride Plays reading of Sophie Sagan-Gutherz's magnificent play. It is thoughtful and touching and rings so perfectly true as a play about young people who really do sound and feel authentically young. I wish I'd had "marked green at birth, marked female at birth" in my life when I was a queer middle and high schooler (though I didn't know it yet)!

I feel so lucky to have seen a couple iterations of The Siblings Play, from a reading at MCC's PlayLabs to the recording of the Rattlestick production from earlier this year. The story it tells is painful, vital, and thought-provoking - and one I want the whole world to see, hear, and experience.

Cambodian Rock Band was one of the last shows I saw pre-COVID and I am so grateful for it. There is humor along with the devastation of the events the play depicts, and I was cheering at the end (along with the rest of the audience) in a way that I never have at any other show.

Some plays leap off the page in a way that reminds you, especially right now, that they are meant to be performed live, on a stage. "The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows" is one of those plays. It's an exhilarating, vibrant, heartbreaking, thought-provoking read that makes me yearn to SEE it in the best way. Each character is fully rendered and even those who at first glance might be less deserving of grace are still given it, without letting them off the hook either. A play I will definitely come back to again and again!

I was so lucky to take part in The Workshop Theater's Fall 2020 writers' group with Isabella Waldron and witness a step in the development of JAWBONE! From the start, I was so deeply taken with this play and the way it lets three young women be so real and true, while simultaneously making its magical world entirely believable for audience members or readers. JAWBONE tells a painful but engaging story of sexual assault and coming of age as a young woman. I can't wait to see where it goes next!

FUKT is the kind of play that makes you feel less alone. It's hard to say something that hasn't already been said in its many recommendations, but it feels important to me after reading such an extraordinary piece as this one, to say something. FUKT is a story of honesty and compassion, including with and for yourself, when those things are most difficult to offer. As these three versions of one woman learn how to be less alone together, so do I.

"Geomancer" is a thoughtful and thought-provoking look at real people and real events that I know I learned little if anything about in school, with a complex layering of science, politics, history, and emotions. It's the sort of play you want to read again, both to gain new insights and to re-experience the journey that Lum has created.

I feel as though I could spent countless more hours just listening in on Rockwell's characters--that's how real and how interesting they are. The time I spent with them while reading "The Tragic Ecstasy of Girlhood" was painful and beautiful, moving and heartfelt, and truly human and nuanced: qualities that are missing in so many stories of teenage girls, but are incredibly well-done in this play. I would love to see these characters take life in production!

A touching, humorous play about a girl dealing with grief, loss, and smashing the patriarchy in her own way. "Do This In Memory of Me" feels simultaneously irreverent but also the most reverent--a contradiction that deepens Genevieve's complex story even further. An exciting, powerful, and powerfully theatrical journey!