Recommended by Tom Moran

Can a play be a coming-of-age piece when the protagonist is like 25? It appears the answer is yes, because this deeply silly play is all about Ray conquering his fears, growing up and moving on. Kudos to Vansant for constructing an aggressively weird milieu and running it through to an appropriate absurd and satisfying conclusion. Lots of fun.

A clever take on the athlete(s) dying young trope - what about the other team? What I love about the piece is how the students are being perfectly sensible and empathetic human beings about their whole impossible situation, but it's the coach who's hopelessly emotionally stunted. Which makes for a great contrast while simultaneously mining both black comedy and legit pathos. Well done.

A strangely charming piece about two Iowa farm kids whose worlds are blown apart by a visiting movie star - and who react in sweetly cornpone fashion to some most unwholesome goings-on. The piece defies expectation in a very inviting way, and the ending is pitch-perfect.

A witty epistolary take on dealing (or not dealing) with rejection that hits close to home. Seidel does a lot with one actor, who manages to encapsulate his deteriorating mental state through a combination of escalating demands and increasingly whacked language, despite us never hearing any other side of the story. It's a fun journey to take.

A darkly comic and finely tuned dissection of a failing marriage, told through a time loop structures kept fresh through the clever conceit of the characters not quite realizing that the sameness of all their days has become literal. The awkward sex scenes are laugh-out-loud funny on paper and I'm sure would be even better in performance. And the end is quietly devastating. Well done.

A hilarious, frantic, and telling two-hander, built around a preposterous revenge fantasy. The exchanges are great and I could see this being a ton of fun for both actors, to say nothing of the audience.

A winning time capsule of the early days on shelter-in-place. I enjoyed the indeterminacy of the piece - yes, it's a horribly awkward "date," but never irredeemably so, and both participants end it in a state of limbo about the future- which makes for a fine microcosm of COVID as a whole. A sound, endearing and funny entry into the Zoom play genre.

A sprawling, incredibly theatrical, engrossing trip through the 60s, courtesy of three parallel stories intricately intertwined. I particularly admired the workmanship of the first section, in which each third of the stage tells a different story, yet all three are clearly linked thematically and occasionally through language as well. It would be easy for the play to lose momentum after such a memorable start, but the continual introduction of crucial characters, motivations and revelations keep it brisk and involving throughout. Would love to see this magic on stage.

A solid little gem of a one-minute play that ends on a wonderful twist - which is perhaps the greatest thing a one-minute piece can aspire to.

A very fun take on an old idea. The trope of the husband trying to catch his wife in an affair is a tired one (as the play points out) but Evan's unusual motivation for the maneuver makes this a different story altogether, one livened up by sharp and believable exchanges, absurdist details about single life, and a pitch-perfect ending.