Recommended by Jordan Elizabeth

There are moments in this play that are utterly transcendent: somehow beautiful, horrible, and heartbreaking all at once. VillaMil slowly allows these characters to unfold with a flawless control of rhythm and exposition. KARA SEVDA is a hard and essential play for our international landscape, where a few terrifying, power-crazed people hold the power to end everything we know. And in the midst of this horror, VillaMil gives us hope, even if the only hope is for the possibility of a moment's connection with another soul. I'll be thinking about this play for a long time.

What a fun, wonderful surprise this play was. I, COCKROACH is romantic and sweet and horrifying and smart. I love the riffs on Kafka. On the surface, this is a fun romp, but it also honors the sanctity of life in an utterly original way. Totally loved it.

THE LAST RING is a thoughtful play filled with lovely metaphors and badass women. What an exciting project for a creative team -- actresses would have an absolute blast with the intense choreographed fighting as well as the in-depth character development. Hopeful, vulnerable, loving.

An absolutely stunning, perfect horror play, THE DEMON HUNTER scared the bejeezus out of me. A haunting exploration of the strange nightmare-place where mental illness meets the spirit world. I would LOVE to see this in production.

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.