Recommended by Jarred Corona

Oh my goodness. This is certainly a play of high achievement. When I read the final lines, my mouth opened and I made several "Ah!" noises of joy. In college, I was in two feminist Greek plays. I did puppetry and music for them. We danced in the ensemble. We formed pictures. Reading this, I couldn't help but hear the music we might have done. Oh, how it excited me. How I would love to see this. How I would love to be a puppeteering musician in the chorus. This is splendid. Elisabeth Giffin Speckman has crafted something amazing.

It's been years since I read Cyrano de Bergerac, but I think this play ascends any need to know much about it at all, even if it does help. What are the stories we write if not acts of creation? Upon the moon, that shining symbol of romance, we cast our love and melancholy. There, as does Cyrano, we meet them both in turns. There's great fun in the fights and the imaginations Roxanne and the nuns gift us. It's a play of great fun, and Cross certainly left me with a pleasant warmth and a smile on my face.

I find such fear in the idea of forgetting. Yet, time makes clearing caches of us all, doesn't it? We can't stop that we'll forget, nor can we prevent our loved ones from forgetting. What we can do, and what we can hope for, is a love that itself will always exist, no matter who we are or where we are. Robert LeBlanc showcases a horrifying beauty in this play. To hear of someone's love for you with little pretense, to have one who remains no matter what... No matter the fear, there is love and hope here. Love. Hope.

When the denizens of hell, the overseers who punish and guide, lament the fates of those that come to the gates of the damned, that's something special. There's some sadistic joy in treating specific sinners, but others... It makes one wonder about the very concept. It's not fair, after all, and it's all the choice of those above all of our paygrades. It isn't fair. And we get beaten down by unfair systems. Yet, still, there are things we can do. People we can treat with kindness. We can keep arguing for a better forever. This is a good reminder.

"That's not how it happened. That's not how it. That's not..." I have relived my own personal traumas multiple times. Often times, that's the only space we have to confront our abusers: our memories. But remembering is harsh. It's confusing and hurtful and ever changing. Memories are hard. Trauma is harder. Sasha Karuc captures that experience unrelentingly in this short but lasting piece.

If ever there were a role to lose oneself in, Eileen Kinsella must be the role of a lifetime, a dream. Oh, how I heard her at the end of the first act, and oh, how the scene was raw and visceral and stunning. To see a talented actress devour this hearty meal would be reason enough to watch this show. Add on top of that the excellent dialogue and the lack of easy answers and it's clear to me: Kerr Lockhart is a force, and SANCTITY is a stirring achievement. I look forward to seeing it one day.

The play fighting in this reminds me of some of my favorite moments of play from childhood and in TYA shows I've read and directed. Then, just as what happens with life, things change. Adulthood sneaks in. Sexuality and desire. There's fun and lightness in these pages, but there's also something sinister. I'll be thinking on the ease to which the sitter moves on from her actions for a while. In a way, it's terrifying. How frightening this world we grow into is, a strange feeling Weaver captures expertly.

Nonsense and Beauty is perhaps the most apt way to define the word "love." How easy it is to sit to the side and see people's messy loves and think, "No, I could not." Yet I understand. Those people I have loved and do love, the feelings I have and all I would do for them, they aren't the choices that perhaps serve best. But they keep love close. They let me back in the nonsense and the beauty. I have a love I hope extends to forever and whose beautiful nonsense might end up in such a beautiful play.

"The Fall is just another kind of creation." When I was in my undergrad, administrators sought to cut costs and ravage our college of arts and letters. The Kentucky governor of the time talked solely about STEM's ability to find jobs. There's piles upon piles of unfortunate truths in THE PROFESSION. From patriarchy to capitalism, the world is much more complicated and harsh than we like to confront. It's messy. One could argue it's a place made by an asshole. And yet Eppich-Harris takes our fallen world and commits an act of beautiful creation. Wonderfully done.

Look, if I were a mob boss Taurus instead of a writing Pisces and my boyfriend a detective Sagittarius, I hope this is exactly how it would go: a little crazy, a little absurd, a little difficult, but, ultimately, full of messy but lasting love. Sometimes our personal and work lives fight it out and there are no easy answers. Yet, despite the uncertainty of the lasting future, love, in all its anxieties, is there to ease the pain. To slowly burn us until we're smiling regardless. Harper Lee made a devious, delicious little play. Please give it a read.