Recommended by Adam Richter

Powerful and thought-provoking piece about the future of mankind and how our current stupidity shapes it.

What do we live for? Does it matter if what we're living for isn't real? Joy Cutler explore this question in this short and fascinating. I loved how when Cutler introduces the characters, neither act like who they really are. But once the facade is dropped you can't help but root for them. Well done!

Perverse, disgusting and laugh-out-loud funny. Now I need a shower.

This play starts with cringe-worthy jokes and ends with a horrific twist that, in retrospect, makes perfect sense. I thoroughly enjoyed this taut 1-minute thriller. Well done!

A powerful and disturbing piece about rape and survival. This can and should be produced everywhere.

This play takes place in the middle of the ocean, but clearly the husband and wife think they're the center of the universe. This is a funny short piece that's ideal for older actors to really have a blast.

A deft and original script about the struggles of a marriage where both partners are stuck in a rut.

Pandemic times require creative ways to think about theater, and Rachael Carnes has come up with a brilliant story that, in both story and form, is ideal for this era. "Crossing the Amur" is a funny and profound short piece that should be appearing on screens everywhere.

What I like most about Bryan Stubbles' "#WeToo: a dialogue" is how effectively it shows the characters growing up and moving on despite the trauma, yet never being able to shed the effects of the abuse. This is a short but powerful play about sexual assault.

Scott Sickles has built a future world that is both vast and intimate. In this final chapter, the emphasis is on the intimate as he brings us the final days of Anzor and Teddy and their wonderful, if doomed, family. In "Marianas Trench," Scott showed us two boys who manage to survive despite their families. Here, they have created a family that is worth fighting, and dying for. "The Known Universe" is a fitting and heartbreaking (maybe fitting BECAUSE it's heartbreaking) conclusion to the masterful trilogy.