Recommended by Toby Malone

A savage, searing thunderclap of a satire that leaves no stone unturned and is never afraid to speak its truth, raging against the anonymous, numberless carnage that the LGBTQIA+ community has endured over the last century. Cleverly subverting the narrative to encompass a closeted football star who fears discrimination for being straight, 'Dead Gay Body' careens through the body count of generations of homophobia from the Holocaust to Pulse and beyond, and as the bodies pile up the urgency becomes all the more apparent. Produce this play now. We need to see it.

A thoughtful, striking play about the impact of past trauma and what happens when coincidence drags the repressed pain back to the surface. Saltwick establishes in Alma and Leslie an immediate if tenuous friendship bond and intertwines their lives with a common thread. Most excitingly, Saltwick then shifts us forward a generation to gauge the impact on their children, and the ways in which stories change with time. An important play on important themes.

A simmering portrait of what it looks like when patience and faith looks deep into the eye of hatred and hypocrisy and does the right thing. With all of the horror of what is going on right now, it's important to cast the regular eye back to remember what the country has already been through, and how such inhumanity is as old as time. A timely reminder, a compelling read. Get this into another Festival, fast.

A short, powerful, painful moment between a father and the son he has willingly lost, unable to accept that the he he knew is now working in drag as 'Effie Vescent'. In this taut ten-minute piece, Young packs in years worth of pain, accusations, and consequences, and denies us the happy ending that a lesser playwright would default to. I'd love to see this world expand in a longer version.

Caffrey takes the familiar sci-fi trope of 'kids find and befriend a strange creature without telling the adults' and then considers what rising ocean levels would add to the mix in this tightly-wound pieces set thirteen years in the future. A strong meditation on growing up and growing apart in a changing world, 'The Amphibians' considers the ways in which Simone and Bryn's friendship is tested when they come across an injured, evolving creature. A really fun read.

So many quarantine Zoom plays self-consciously incorporate the medium without really acknowledging the absurdity of the situation: Rachael Carnes, however, embraces the isolation mania with a series of pithy, incisive, insightful one-liners that gets right to the heart of the hopelessness of the new world. My favorite part: the questions and abrupt answers that pepper this lovely little play are all established as being a product of only four days in isolation. I'd love to see the same characters after four months!

'Ida Invisible' fires on all cylinders in creating a familiar but distinctive fantasy world with all the wit and sass of the 'Shrek' universe. With memorable fairytale characters, Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn subverts the genre with a reluctant hero actively resisting her 'happily ever after', yet must quest to find it to break a curse. This would be an excellent piece for a high school or group with the possibility of using a large, diverse cast. This is a self-aware hoot from start to finish, and worth a read!

A delightful three-hander about the dangers of trying to control the uncontrollable and the pitfalls of attempting to wrest power from that you do not understand. The banter between Web and Juliana is terrific, and the concept of resurrecting Forgotten for personal gain is a beauty.

A quirky meditation on those days when it feels like the universe is trying to give you a sign not to follow your dreams... in this case God Himself shows up to remind Beth that she should be prioritizing things aside from her art. Quippy, fast-paced, fun!

A raw, honest evaluation of how the personas we adopt to replace past selves are not always able to repair the trauma deep down. A one-woman show hijacked by two other earlier versions of the playwright's past, this striking evaluation of the self is theatrical, haunting, and often laugh-out-loud funny.