Recommended by Toby Malone

I read a lot of plays, yet I keep coming back to THE DROLL. And every time I do, I'm nagged by a thought: "IS this my FAVORITE play?" Do I love it because it restores all my faith in what the theatre can do? Because it inspires me with its wily cleverness, fantasticke stylization, yet intense modernity? Because it imagines a slice of history long-forgotten and still makes it so stunningly urgent? One that heaves my hearte into my mouthe as the very form of art is on the line? All doubts begone. This is my FAVORITE. Read. It.

It's not often you see verse plays like this anymore - raw, vulnerable, intimate and beautifully crafted. Miranda Jonte lays her character bare in their desire and makes extremely clear what they want and need. This would be an incredible gift for any performer.

Adam Richter beautifully and hilariously takes on Socrates and Plato (and the smug Sycophantes) by reminding us that every time new technology is added to the world, there is always an old-school resistance, even with something as simple as writing down lessons. Plato jots down Socrates' lessons until the best use of a deus ex machina I can remember seeing in ages proves that reliance on the new-fangled device takes away skills from other areas. Great fun.

Coming in just a couple days too late to be part of the 'plays with inanimate objects as characters list,' Lee R. Lawing seizes upon a stroke of genius by pondering: once we are done with our COVID masks, what about the masks? How do you think they feel? At this riotous support group, four masks console one another after 'D-Day' (or the day people discarded their masks). Fun, theatrical, and just the right length. Great stuff Lee.

I've been following 'The Bergerac Simulation' through its drafts stages, and have been delighted with what Mora Harris has managed to create. Shifting gender roles in 'Cyrano' and updating to a virtual reality setting might feel like a difficult sell, but Mora does it with such effortless charm and goofy humor that you can't help but fall in love with the world she has created. Many adaptations struggle under the weight of their predecessors, but this one is created with such a deft touch that you might emerge preferring Sara-no-H to Cyrano.

An agonizing, human, devastating piece of theatre that deals with the human fallout after one of the least understood or emphathized-for events a couple can ever go through. The chasm between Lila and Gary is so acute that it is made all the more painful with the flickers of their past life glimmering through their shared pain. FaceTiming each other through a bathroom door, unable to bear the conversations they need to have in front of their therapist, and irredeemably on different pages, this is a heartbreaking piece that needs to be seen. Well done.

A zippy short that presses on exit strategies from marriages: Evan hopes to catch his wife cheating on him because then he'd have an excuse to live as a fun-loving single man. While the grass may always be greener, Megan masterfully brings Evan back around, making the final twist even more gasp-worthy. Witty, quippy, and good-natured: just as you'd expect from Lisa.

Self-love can be hard. Sure, loving other people seems easier because we forgive foibles and flaws and minor issues, but loving ourselves despite all those exact same flaws? That's a different matter. This would be a real delight to see performed, with the classic theatre-school 'mirroring' exercise come to life, as a woman tells her reflection that she loves her, only to be called out on her lies. By her reflection. This is a lovely journey of self-care and realization, and ultimately, the best kind of surrender.

Sometimes a playwright goes straight to the heart of the matter and lays everyone out on the line. Viewed all at once, it can seem like too much. Which of course it is. Individual shootings are horrifying enough, but normalizing them to the extent that we can become so easily numb to confusing one for the other is monstrous. Adam Richter chillingly packs all of this into a minute. Great work.

Coffee pods, maybe a brilliant time saving idea when first launched, are now rightly seen as a major blight on the world. Here, the sort-of undercover inventor of the cursed chunks of plastic issues as public mea culpa in a way of absolving himself of his actions.