Recommended by Vince Gatton

Sartres with heart. An afterlife waiting room scenario with a lot to say about family, history, and self-determination — especially for women. I’m a sucker for acts of kindness on stage, and this little slice of existential hell unexpectedly got me all up in my feelings. Beautifully done.

Packing a similar punch to the best Ray Bradbury short stories, this play is science fiction at its emotionally-weird best. Simple, elegant, funny, romantic, scary, and heart-tugging, it covers a lot of dramatic terrain in a very short time. It also features two characters I quickly came to love, and (in the highest praise I can give as an actor) immediately wanted to play. (Plus: the wide-open-door gender and ethnic casting options for both roles make me want to see it again and again, in all sorts of permutations.)

Oh, boy, do I dig this play. Seven excellent roles for women, and I defy anyone not to fall at least a little bit in love with all five MacKillop sisters. David Hilder’s verbal wit is sharp as ever, bouncing wildly entertaining dialogue among ever-shifting character combinations in the literal sandbox he’s given himself to play in. But through all the structural cleverness and sometimes-cutting wit, what really shines are the women themselves, and the throbbing hearts that drive them. An absolute gem.

There’s so much packed into this tight little story: joy, pride, disillusionment, forgiveness, guilt, grief, wisdom, and grace, all told so briskly and with such theatrical verve. Nicely done.

This short play about two Mars rovers is lovely and funny and sad and even terrifying -- it's as if Vladimir and Estragon had one job to do besides Wait for Godot, and it was to find water on Mars. Their different views and approaches to their unique shared mission create a story of immense pathos, at once intimate and cosmic. A buddy sort-of comedy that stares into the existential void. Bravo.

This short, sharp mostly-two-hander appears to be a very well-executed example of a familiar template: two strangers at odds in a public space who come to find commonalities and achieve understanding. But this little play has more on its mind about the world we live in today: how we respond to risk and where we seek safety, and how easily we can be manipulated into confusing the two.

If you usually find whimsy cloying and hard to swallow, I strongly suggest you try the Adam Szymkowicz version. The Book Store is magical, yes, but it knows how you feel, it gets it, it’s been there...and it finds a million little ways to coax you in anyway. Delightful, witty, moving, and satisfying as a good novel — the one you didn’t know you needed, right when you needed it.

Dang, y'all. The individual pieces of Reykjavik are magical or menacing or both; collectively they add up to a whole that delivers a disturbing and satisfying emotional wallop. Sexy, dangerous, and weirdly compassionate, Reykjavik is hell of a meal.

I love what Donna Hoke is up to here, testing her audience's response to uncomfortable relationship and power dynamics through the filter of gender. I was fascinated by where my moral lines moved, how my judgments and comfort zones shifted scene-to-scene, as the one variable -- gender -- kept getting swapped out. Far more than a clever experiment, the characters and their messy emotional ties make for full and compelling people, and pat answers are not on the menu. Would love to see this on its feet, to feel the crowd's responses and eavesdrop on their conversations afterward.

There is symbolic resonance galore in this conversation between two women on the margins of a ritual steeped in tradition, as one year rings out and a new one rings in. Yet the characters never feel like symbols: these are richly dawn, fully rounded, complicated individuals, who’s story drew me in immediately, and satisfied deeply with its funny, sad, and messy humanity.