Recommended by Toby Malone

Bridget was abandoned by her mother as a child, leaving to live with the faeries rather than deal with the realities of motherhood. Now Bridget struggles with her own motherhood and seeks the same fate. Beautifully sensitive in its gradually-dawning sense of maternal love, as Bridget's faerie-taken mother encourages her to make the effort she wishes she had made, and offering hope for the future.

This is a stunning, careening, important piece of work that has so many layers that it's easy to forget as you explore the horror of Japanese internment camps that mere minutes ago you were laughing at anecdotes on sexual awakenings and racial assumptions. Hamashima deftly crafts a genre-smashing self exploration that ultimately reveals itself to be a quarantine reaction but in no way follows the standard rules of one. Heartfelt, aching, hilarious, this self-exploration (complete with ALEXA) is a thing of beauty, and one that should be seen live often after the world returns.

A nice mix of prison tropes and character archetypes to explore life on the inside... of a jar of bugs. Particular praise for the 'lifer' Daddy(-o) Longlegs, edgy fireflies, defensive cricket, and pious mantis. Moves along at a crackling pace as this disparate band come together to battle the consummate bugs-in-jars problem: a lack of airholes.

Jacquie Floyd-Priskorn gives us another trademark smiler of a play as she explores the bureaucracy of the afterlife and the accounting of how we treat even the tiniest creatures we come across. Plenty of fun to be had here with witty lines, imaginative world-building, and a nice twist that sends you off in a new direction.

Max Gill's monologue, set nearly twenty years ago after 9/11, feels immediate and entirely relevant to our current situation, which is incredibly deflating but also makes this an important comment. The blind hatred of 'the other' pervades our world and lashing out at those who look, think, or worship differently to you has been hyper-normalized in the years where we felt we could collectively grow following Obama's election. The fact that the opposite is true is devastating, where a flag and paint over a slur is supposed to counteract the hatred. We can and must do better.

A quippy, zippy comedy perfect for the holidays, where harried mother Sandra struggles to explain to her daughter why there are multiple Santas at the mall and why they have different colored skin to what she'd been expecting. There's a lot of things you expect in a holiday play, but I have to admit, an explanation of the origins of Santa Claus by way of Buddhism and fisting was a new one for me...

Parenting can be a bewildering process: you think you know what you're going to get and then this little stranger shows up. No matter how many books you've read, none of the books were written specifically about _your_ kid. So when your kid starts doing some unexplainable stuff - and in Rachael Murray's short play, these parents are dealing with some SERIOUS stuff - it's natural to panic. I felt this so deeply, the public argument, the irrational fear that you're a terrible person because of what your kid drove you to: it's a really fascinating study.

A devastating, honest, incredibly real portrayal of the still taboo subject of miscarriage, explored in a sensitive, thoughtful manner by Emma Wood. The hours and days following a miscarriage - self-blame, denial, anger, grief, all while fighting off well-wishers who need to be brought up to speed - are next to impossible to navigate, and Emma shows us with a sensitive touch the reality of negotiating a loss that those who have not suffered can never really understand. Beautifully nuanced, with narrative choices that pinpoint the confusion and fear that both partners experience, and ending in hope. Beautiful work.

A wonderfully sensitive throwback to those confusing, terrifying days of teenagerdom, where you can be surrounded by people your age and feel utterly alone. Victims of bullies live in fear spawned by the unpredictability of actions: get the wrong kid on the wrong day, or go down the wrong corridor and you're toast. Emma beautifully captures that anxiety, intermingled with the yearning for independence and strength not yet available, to consider what would happen if two victims teamed up. A futile gesture? Maybe. But it's something, and Cal's offer resounds in a heartbreaking fashion.

A typically delightful Prillaman slice of life that gives its audiences enough credit that it doesn't feel the need to explain... anything. An unhinged neighbor roaming backyards burning rakes is a form of civil disobedience that has a root worth exploring, but Prillaman's smart enough to know that the reward is in the wondering. A killer final line, too, followed up by a delightful final stage direction. Great stuff.