Recommended by Asher Wyndham

The language has this Jarry-ness to it, it pops, and makes you think about excess and exploits of wannabe emperors in the past and our f'd up present. It's a FUN piece for the actor and audience.

A Frankenstein of bioethics, Derman's THE CREATURE fantastically and freakishly captures our fears and questions about science now and in the future in a new language and structure for the stage. Makes you really think about whether or not our goals for survival and extending life are worth it if all the examination and extraction results in possible torture and suffering. This play makes imaginative leaps in time and place unlike many plays. A challenge for actors and designers. Check it out.

A complicated, but endearing force of nature, a tribute to one's mother like no other, that captures an intersectionality of issues and identities (immigrant experience, sexuality, to name a few) while being tender, heartfelt, raunchy, sexy, spiritual. Check it out.

The non-linear, fluid, choreopoetic approach to storytelling in COLOR BOY creates a continuous chain of emotions and conflict. Every single page there is a surprise, of revelation, of questioning, illumination, beauty. This is a playwright that definitely writes so passionate about the human experience, its joys and traumas, in a new vocabulary of language, style, and structure.

This play is unlike anything on NPX. The sounds, the poetics, the choreography, the history and all the emotion. It all builds in a forward movement that rarely slows down. A captivating play on language and identity, history and culture. The monologue starting on page 83 would be a killer audition piece.

A perfect response to the digital world that deadens creativity with mass consumption, through the voice of a high-school photographer. A great little monologue not just an actor but also lighting and set designer.

It begins methodical and clinical and then transitions believably to place of raw emotion and honesty, searing poetry and visuals like Sarah Kane's 4:48 Pyschosis. A reminder that the stage is a safe place to address the mental state of individual and country under the spotlight. A tough piece, but a piece of necessity given our times. There some dark dark thoughts, but some hope which is surprising.

Bokser's speaker, a full-figured and curvy woman, has so much gusto and confidence and sexiness that it radiates off the page. The playwright found just the right story (an affair) to focus on body image in America and say so much about the friction between some women in regards to appearance, relationships and sex. This is a smart choice for any festival on body image.

Give me a pile of blind scripts, monologues without author names, and I will be able to find the one written by WREN AUBREY LATHAM. A singular voice in monologue form, a standout in vision on queerness in America in solo performance. There's so much this playwright does in a poetic lines, saying so much about gender expectations and societal norms, that you nod in agreement and go back and read it again.

Fuck everybody else. All that matters is your perspective. Be yourself. That and so much more is advocated in this positive monologue on sizeness, body, and gender in Hazouri's monologue. It doesn't wait for you to catch up to process, it's bold and direct, in your face. Deal with it. Talk about the speaker after the show. You got their courage? A smart choice for a festival on LGBTQ stories.