Recommended by Zach Barr

A touching ghost play about saying the unsayable and preparing for a future that may not come. Walters unfolds the play wonderfully, with seemingly insignificant details taking on greater weight as the play continues, until by the end every word is flooded with meaning. A challenging and rewarding trio of roles, with a musical undercurrent that gives the play a unique dimension. Well worth a read.

As perfectly paced a thriller as you can find, LUMIN is a tense and rich play about taking "what's best for the community" to its logical extreme. To Gibson's immense credit, what seems like a straightforward moral divide muddies brilliantly as it goes, and by the final scenes the ending feels both earned and wholly unexpected. Deserving of a production yesterday.

Two deeply relatable characters and their richly drawn sibling relationship anchor this shimmering play about the agony and ecstasy of being "special." While the play intrigues with its live stage magic, at heart is a mature, unique discussion about the dangers of prioritizing lasting fame over personal joy. It upholds a forgotten history of female magicians, while reclaiming anonymity as a desirable outcome for one's life. Stage it today!

A gonzo comedic riff on documentary theatre, with a genuine message at its core about finding purpose in small things that may not ultimately matter – be it theatre or earmuffs. Balancing two portraits of communities making something from nothing, Peercy's script is a feast for any ensemble of actors, with jokes that come so fast you won't realize how deep they cut until a page later.

Simple on the surface, but brimming with rage and despair underneath, SAVINGS! is a story of how we move forward when the stability we relied on comes to an end. A Greek tragedy for the Amazon Era, a portrait of a community deciding whether to throw in the towel or hold onto the past for dear life, a human look at a corner of the country that is often ignored.

A play about consumption and being consumed and what happens when you get spit back out. Kime finds so many thematic angles in the nature of hot dogs that it's genuinely unexpected how the play manages to tie them all together by the end. But it does, and it's a humorous, terrifying, unabashedly loud ride. Enormous theatricality, and well served by a strong world premiere at Red Theater.

A play that is simultaneously enormous in scale and refreshingly intimate, unashamedly cringe and apocalyptically serious, angry at the whole world and trying to find the worthwhile center of it. One of the better depictions of the emotional whiplash of being a young person today, paralyzed by both the unfairness of the world and the unethical desire to escape from it all.

Wildly funny and theatrically turbulent, without ever diverting from its exploration of how cultural exchange shapes and warps identity. Izumi's play is deeply personal, while also leaving ample space for the viewpoints of future performers and audiences. The gonzo construction of the play keeps the pace moving quickly while still digging into some incredibly thorny topics – and, to Izumi's credit, she follows Kurasawa's advice and never averts her eye.

"Shouldn’t we be like, intervening?"
"I think she has to ride this one out."
Anello's harrowing play captures the riveting and frustrating cadence of friends who, in their attempts to speak candidly, reveal nothing at all. A portrait of grief and guilt, and a carefully tangled web of relationships that has no chance but to culminate in a wholly satisfying climax. A rich opportunity for seven very game actors.

Gwynn's reverent play finds unique parallels across the stories of two communities, protected in one land and hunted in another. Filled with music and queer longing (as all plays should be), it's an expertly paced fable of summer innocence coming to an end – or maybe evolving into something more mature. Rich opportunities for any production company, and well worth the challenge.