Recommended by Jordan Bird

This wonderful period piece blew me away with its accessibility, its honoring of story, its depth of character, its crazy-high stakes, and its charm. The ending made me want to stand up and shout; I had fiery grateful feminist tears in my eyes. THE SALONNIERES is full of humor, horror, and badass women. I'm obsessed.

A surprisingly touching, funny, clever short play about communication, isolation, and vulnerability -- and about the unexpected magic that can happen when you meet the "right" person at the "right" time. I love the interplay of the real person with the online persona: the fluid movement between complete, shocking honesty and the calculated responses, the speeches we prepare in our heads that help us cope with the world. I really love this short play.

This play is so dark, so funny, so off-the-wall. AWESOME BIG SOMEBODY casts light (and shadows) on the scary, seemingly glamorous world of Fame, and on the ridiculous things we expect women to go ga-ga over. The stakes are high, the characters are off-the-charts insane; this play is an awesome, weird, wild ride. I love the climactic scene, which is like a wonderful bizarre-o horror-farce, blending reality and fiction until they're unrecognizable. Really fun, really smart, -really- dark, really hilarious.

A beautiful, stirring piece for young audiences, BOUND BY STARDUST guides Miranda and the audience through the frigid landscape of grief and memory. Combining history, science, and magic, Haas creates a world full of possibility and transformation.

MIRRORS is a devastating, beautiful, haunting exploration of the wounds and secrets we carry, the seemingly inevitable cycle of sexual abuse, assault, and rape. Femia has an utterly unique approach to the topics she tackles in her plays.

The last line of this play always shakes me -- it's a moment of subtle, beautiful transformation, and a call to action. As in so many of her other plays, ROUNDS PER SECOND asks us to add something new into our thoughts and conversation around a topic: in this case, Burbano asks us to look closely at the point where privilege and cultural heritage/country of origin intersect with gun violence. Burbano gives us no easy answers; she guides us into asking the right kinds of questions.

Oh, my heart. This gorgeous poem-play is among the most healing, mesmerizing, dazzling pieces of theatre I've encountered -- I dearly, dearly hope to see it performed some day. Everyone, everyone should read this. And creative teams should be lining up around the block to produce it. Absolutely stunning.

Utterly horrifying, and hard, and necessary. Carnes has pieced together a narrative from many voices, and it will break you. Dazzling and powerful.

Ahhhh! I love this short play. I don't want to -spoil- it for anyone, but Partain tackles one of my favorite mythologies in an utterly unique, exciting, mind-bending way. I feel terrified and exhilarated along with Nora and Billy as they try to climb their way to.... what? Super fun.

"Show me all the parts of you that you do not love so I know where to begin."

At once hilarious and earth-shattering, THE ELVIS ADMINISTRATION has a charm that is utterly unique. The musicality and poetry called to mind Charles Mee, but Walters has a voice all her own. She somehow manages to perfectly pair the poignant with the hysterical. With repetition riddled throughout, this play explores the universal vulnerability inherent in loving another creature.