Recommended by Asher Wyndham

This is written as if by a 12 year-old on a sugar high. Zany fun! Kids will have a blast on stage with this. If they haven't done theatre before, they might get hooked on it with this play.

O'Grady guts the mythos of Disney's Beauty and the Beast for its patriarchal and sexist views of women and in doing so offers an unexpected Belle, gutsy and smart, victorious -- just like the many women of the Me Too Movement. Belle's reflection on her life really made me think about this fairy tale in a new light and forces me to not take fairy tales on face value and always read them or see them in stage and screen, just to be sure, with a feminist lens. A perfect addition to any fairy tale themed or feminist solo festival.

It's best to have that one good friend that listens and supports you, even better when it's a family member, especially when other family members get in your face about the stupidest stuff or doubt you. The playwright captures that landslide of emotion, of loss for Nate, the grandson missing his grandfather. The playwright leaves so much for the actor to work with from beginning to end. A winning solo for audition or festival for a Black actor.

Beautiful writing for an older actor of color. Be a great role for a big teddy bear of a man with a big heart. Captures the joy and wonder and the call for responsibility many grandparents feel when they see a grandbaby for the first time. The unexpected transition near the end is really funny, and it reinforces its theme beautifully.

The title is a hook, GRINDR MOM, and the monologue itself -- a truth revealed, an exposing of a loveless marriage bound by Mormon faith -- is startling, unexpected because where I thought the play was going to go, it goes somewhere else -- and in the end, your heart breaks for the woman. Larsen does a fine job creating a closeness between speaker (Grindr Mom) and the reader, and a fine actress will create that closeness with an audience, as if we were her girlfriends listening.

This is only an excerpt, look forward to reading the full-script. An accessible play about race politics between kids that goes where many TYA scripts don't go. Authentic-sounding dialog intensifies this script, from page to page -- it went places I didn't expect. I can see this play being a great way to discuss some challenging issues in the classroom.

If your theatre specializes in LGBTQI experience or not, check out Oglesby's sci-fi-comedy SMALL STEPS. Don't have to be a gay guy searching for connection on and off the dating apps to identify with our Mars-bound protagonist Skip Powers. Skip's disappointment in mankind (all that intolerance from family or Washington D.C.) and with toxic people, is also our own -- all that makes you sometimes want to take a rocket trip to another planet by yourself! If Skip can be part of our evolutionary history, so can you!
Zany. Smart. Poignant. A fun play for media and prop designers.

If you liked the movie Clueless or Mean Girls, you will love this dark comedy of high school behavior and riff on Macbeth. It intelligently examines ambition in respects to the admission process and pursuit of higher learning. Ridiculous, but never superficial, this play goes deep, dark deep when you least expect it, and it's so much fun. Highly recommended!

Usually in a fairy tale or any play, there's an illusion, an illusion of the perfect life, of love -- and it's usually some kind of lie or violence that shatters it. In Carnes's fantastic feminist monologue play, Aurora aka Sleeping Beauty is woke, and she isn't iunder any spell, the a-hole Prince is not in her life, she's movin' on -- she needs a job! Her toughness, despite her innocence in a new world, is so charming and inspiring-- some don't have guts like her to ditch toxic partners or friends. Produce this gem.

Hageman does an Angela Carter-spin on the Disney Ariel character and, in doing so, exposes a harsh truth about society's f'd-up concept of beauty and body image and how that destroys childhood, especially girls. Another knockout monologue from one of our best emerging playwrights.