Recommended by Adam Richter

A concise, disturbing look at the corrosiveness of online life.

This is a poignant and beautiful play about fathers and sons, and how parents adapt their expectations for their children. Philip Middleton Williams deftly takes a familiar subject and gives us something completely original and unexpected. And as a former baseball fanatic, this play reminded me of what I used to love about the game.

I loved how Jack Levine put up obstacle after obstacle for Eric, then — WHAM! — pulls the rug out from everyone, including the audience, sending the play in a completely different, yet plausible direction. This was lots of fun to read and would be great to see on the stage.

Sometimes the most erudite questions require the simplest answers. In Steve Martin's beautiful one-minute play, he deftly tackles issues of mortality and living in the present. I would love to see more of Win and Tim in other plays.

How do you forgive someone who's committed a horrific act? How do you find redemption if YOU are the one who committed said horrific act? These are the questions that lie at the heart of this thought-provoking and unexpectedly tender play. Scott Sickles doesn't try for the easy or pat answers, but finds answers that work for Cady and Wolfgang.

What I loved about this play is how DC Cathro shows us two characters in a shallow (and somewhat mean-spirited) conversation, then turns the whole thing on a dime into a new direction, without once letting up on the wit or depth of the characters. This is a funny and tender play that gets to the heart of why we find the people we do.

This is a dark comedy with heavy emphasis on the comedy. The interplay between Byron and Charlie, two polar opposites as brothers, is grounded in reality yet incredibly funny. I also like that Emily McClain doesn't let up on the jokes in the play's final moments. This would be a great addition a short-play festival.

Duncan Pflaster's play is a fantastic satire of life under authoritarianism. While its heroes are brave and admirable members of the resistance, the play also serves as a brutal reminder of how easily we can adapt to it and rework our lives to adjust to the "new normal." I would love to see this produced on a stage.

I laughed out loud at many parts of this play that effectively refutes Sartre: Hell isn't other people, it's ourselves. The cat is tormented by an action it took by instinct; the beaker knows full well what it's done. The bus, meanwhile, is a helpful moral guide. The physicality of the roles alone would make this a fantastic play to see live, but it's also a great story.

Forget about the old maxim "Never meet your heroes." Never meet your fans. Steven Martin gives us a brilliant sendup of teenage hero worship and shows the dark side of what can happen when that reality fails to meet the expectations that we set.