Recommended by Toby Malone

This is a deep, muscular piece that plays on assumption, fear, and what surrounds us. Walsh sets up an evocative world around a misguided startup and sets the ball rolling based on a man's obsession with a disembodied voice and shared affinity for Led Zeppelin. Wonderful work.

Movies and television educate teens that coming-of-age should be exciting, flashy, glamorous, memorable: that last vestige of childhood slipping away in a cavalcade of experiences, milestones, and breakthroughs before heading off to college. But life isn't always so neat. Maizy Broderick Scarpa crafts a coming of age story where, true to its title, no landmark events feel quite as big as they're expected to be, and where growing up feels like a mild anti-climax. This is heartfelt, honest, and open, with strong characters and relatable existential struggles that feel entirely universal.

An imaginative exploration of an other-worldly purgatory space for television characters written off their shows - like when Judy Winslow went upstairs on 'Family Matters' and was never heard from again - with more than a touch of the 'Twilight Zone' and the ardent searching for identity of 'Soul'. Lawing explores this other-space and its myriad doors that exist with a promise of being recast on another show, and the life-long struggle of Joey, who catalogs their failed attempts to return, even as their arch-nemesis Riley returns again and again. Really imaginative stuff.

With such an icon of the theatre, it's easy to read Adler's words as prescriptive adages or bromides: in this bracing monologue, Adler comes alive, a larger-than-life personality with incredible depth of experience upon which her school of thought was built. This would be a great opportunity for any actress, but particularly a strong older performer.

A wonderfully playful short that begins with a familiar "cold feet" trope but careens joyfully around the details of Clint and Troy's planned wedding, including choice of glamorous underwear. Every now and then you remind yourself that these characters are written as elderly folk, which just heightens the effect. A loving, forward thinking piece that shows that even though social security benefits are purported to be the reason for the nuptials, it's much simpler than that. What fun.

A breathtaking, shattering piece of art. Beautifully fragmented, exquisitely detailed through knowing, wise stage directions, and heartbreaking in its depth of loss, this is a piece that made me ache all over. Willa and Faulkner's family is a creation of joy that is demolished with a malevolent swipe, and we mourn the loss of potential every step of the way, in a fury for the inhumanity that could allow this to happen. With beautiful literary bones, this is a piece that barely contains the rage it is written for. A stunning work.

A beautifully raw, open chronicle of the rollercoaster that is teen identity and the ways in which they are navigated through association with kindred spirits as they come and go. Gen and Vee's relationship is so real and textured, with so many points at which they intersect alongside so many more points at which they diverge, in an extremely honest, rough perspective on multiple complications that emerge as they grow, including eating disorders, identity, and how we idealize others. Beautiful stuff.

Everyone has had that moment in a sports stadium where they've looked to the heavens and thought "oh God, just let him make this field goal/cash in this runner/make this penalty shot" as if God has nothing better to do than rig sports games. Here, Lee R. Lawing brings God to the table to show that if he's going to come through for you, you gotta give him what he wants. And it turns that a ticket to the elite eight has a very much Old Testament price.

Any play that begins with a character "deeply annoyed" to be dead, only to shoot down Lincoln, Gandhi, and Proust is a surefire winner. Add to that a snappy style and a killer final line and you have another beauty from Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend. Great stuff!

A chilling, cathartic three-hander that expertly leaves way more questions asked than answered, that leaves the reader grasping for the context between the lines. The trauma that these sisters have endured is never dwelled upon, as a less expert writer might do, but is a given, as rage and hurt bubble away to form the baggage that have defined them. Beautifully done.