Recommended by Tom Moran

A witty, family-friendly romp about a girl raised by tigers, The Feral Child draws its appeal from lots of head-slapping one-liners and physical comedy. The plot is tight, engaging and briskly paced, characters are compelling, and there's a late twist that throws a nice wrench into the proceedings. Recommended for anyone looking for a full-length ready for all audiences, or for anyone who has ever owned a cat.

Two high-school age friends at a bus stop discuss the past and the future, and we gradually come to understand one of them has a serious-to-terminal illness. A heartfelt, quiet slice-of-life that doesn’t offer easy answers or a pat resolution, building interest and story through strongly-realized characters and the evolving relationship between them.

I've been going to the Last Frontier Theater Conference for 8 years now, and "Tastes Like Chicken" remains probably the funniest piece I've seen there. The story of a psychotic brother who arrives to wreak havoc on his sister and her family, "Chicken" benefits from continuously hilarious dialogue and a crisp construction of interrelated subplots that keep topping themselves in ludicrousness. Barnes does a masterful job of delineating characters, continuously upping the stakes throughout, and delivering so many laugh lines it's easy to forget that we're actually watching a descent into madness. Highly recommended.

Monkey Play (or, as I prefer to call it, "Night, Monkey") runs the gamut from absurd to genuinely heartbreaking. It's brimming with great one-liners and bone-dry humor, but at its core this is a play of ideas. As Homer Chimpson attempts to defend his status as an intelligent being, the audience is moved to consider the real meaning of sentience, and comes to sympathize with the plight of a clearly self-aware chimp who only wants to be recognized as such. Higbee deserves credit for mixing the hysterical and thoughtful in winning fashion.

Charming, unpredictable, and riotous. Higbee takes a fun concept - when you're in love, everyone looks like the object of your affection - and spins it into a full-length filled with memorable characters, surprising twists, and a very wry wit that had me laughing out loud at several points. Best of all, the play's conceit means the whole thing files with a cast of just two. Combined with simple, suggested sets, this play is not only immensely charming, its also eminently stageable.