Recommended by Jordan Elizabeth

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.

The final line of this play made me shiver: a chilling pronouncement about the value of life, the things we're willing to crush to be comfortable, the cost of the "American dream" taken to its most extreme end. THE TOWER asks us to pause, listen, and question what we know -- not only about "Mrs." (and the journey she represents), but also about privilege generally.

How is it possible that I have tears in my eyes after 7 pages??? Bykowski has such a strong, unique voice -- I could read this play blind and know it was hers. These characters leap from the page and make you want to touch them. FLESH, BLOOD, & GLASS gives us a simple and beautiful metaphor for the anxiety of parenthood, but Bykowski doubles down by weaving in male privilege and male suppositions about the strength of a woman's body. I love this freaking play.

Huszcza packs so much into this short play about fertility, fanatic religiosity and its economic repercussions, and the roles our culture assigns to women. Theses two characters are boiled down to two things: their hobbies, which become their names, and their gigantically oversized pregnant bodies. The horror of the world of this play is that it's not so far-fetched.

Romantic, simple, and full of beautiful movement -- THE TRAIN would be such an exciting project for a creative team to build the world of this play together. It's rare to find such sweetness juxtaposed with all of the hustle and bustle of mass transit/technology, and Pynn puts them into conversation together really brilliantly.

Lovely and loving, SKATING is a heartfelt, magical story about surviving your first great loss, at whatever age that happens. The pond becomes a sacred space in the natural world, blending the spiritual and the deeply earthy and physical so that they seamlessly melt into one another. Infinite possibilities for staging for a wide variety of creative teams, Adams' play would make an equally charming low-budget staged reading at a school or at a large venue with the budget to bring magic into reality.

Utterly chilling, disarming, horrifying, and deeply important to this moment in our country's history: Renee Calarco has put a spotlight on what we are becoming as walls grow ever higher. Participating in this immersive experience would be actually life-changing in a way very few things are. I expect to see productions of this popping up everywhere in the coming years.