Recommended by Vince Gatton

I don't know what's wrong with Johnna Adams' brain, or with mine. All I know is that NURTURE is dark and twisted, hellaciously sad and screamingly funny, deeply perverse and endlessly quotable...and that I loved it. To fans of early Christopher Durang, but who wished it were all somehow *more* deranged: this is the play for you.

An unspeakably sorrowful and beautifully written teenage RASHOMON, with three characters telling their three different truths of a tragic central event, their voices as distinct and unforgettable as their differing accounts. John Mabey’s play is a chilling and bleak beauty, a tear that freezes before it can fall.

The friction starts right out of the gate when three men are semi-forced together in a carpooling "benefit" program instituted by their employer. Race, class, and power struggles ensue, as well as interpersonal secrets and the volatility of masculinity at its most fragile; hovering over all of it is the insidious and distinctly American brand of capitalism, inserting itself into these men's lives and psyches in ways they don't fully understand and only barely question. Mildred Lewis brilliantly unpacks a carload of American male dysfunction here, and I'll be thinking about it for a long, long time.

John Busser, I hate you so much. I hate you for how heartily and often I laughed at this. I hate you for "Just off Interstate 95". I hate you for delivering so hard on the comedic promise of this glorious, glorious title. I hate you most for thinking of it first before I could.

The nerve. The hot buttered nerve. I'm just gonna sit here and stay mad, and hope everyone else reads this stupid, hilarious play and gets mad with me.

A very brainy, very funny, oddly moving science fiction short, with something big to say about physics, human emotion, attention to detail, the sweep of time, historiography, social and historical contexts for art, and, most importantly, the very real danger of missing the forest for the trees. Imaginative, insightful, and tremendous fun.

What a journey, what a day, what a breathlessly good short solo play. It's the wanderings of the mind, the sudden re-directs of attention, the seemingly unrelated side-quests that turn out to not be unrelated at all, and the gentle accumulations of specific detail that paint a vibrant picture of disconnection and deliver a powerful emotional punch. And the way Scott Sickles brings it in for a landing...this is why he's among the greatest. Worth many a re-read to study how he does it. Masterful.

Two middle-aged rockers have just had a disappointing turnout for their covid-era concert tour. What will they do with their disappointment? DC Cathro is always great at creating real, living, breathing characters, and these two are great to spend time with. He also understands the concept of getting at the universal through the specific, and though we may not all be sunsetting British rock stars, the questions this play raises about ethics and responsibility, what we owe to each other as individuals and to society as a whole, hit deep.

Well, that escalated quickly! A disagreement over proper tree-decorating techniques escalates wildly out of control, stretching forward and backward through time and across two families, exposing secrets and hilariously catastrophic consequences -- all under the watchful eye and droll tongue of an omniscient narrator. A late, almost-casual reveal punched a gut-laugh out of me. A hilarious and grim holiday gem.

Rebellion or appeasement? Two teenagers go wittily toe-to-toe over how best to handle their mother’s oppressive Christmas card photo demands. Secrets lurk here in these few short pages, however, plus hard truths and painful histories; and the choices these young people make in this bedroom will reverberate long after the holiday season. A meaty and inspiring family drama.

No one blends the uncanny, the inexplicable, the horrifying, and the hilarious quite like Daniel Prillaman. This one involves a goose. I'll say no more.

Except to add that a goose tried to kill my elderly mother once -- in a cemetery, no less -- so it's worth asking: how fantastical is this really? Perhaps not very. Prillaman knows things. I'm convinced of it.