Recommended by Heather Helinsky

The power of storytelling. Connection and search for a homeland. What sacrifices are made for love? What hopes and dreams can you have in the desert as an outsider? This plays interweaves stories, from Latinx myths to SE Hinton's Outsiders, as teenagers try to exist in the desert with helicopters searching for them. Haunting writing; left me with lines that still resonated with me long after I read it.

This is not a play about the Clintons, the blue dress, or anything you normally think about when you hear this name. Instead, the writer has given us a heartbreaking piece about what it means to be the "Other Woman." Monica is an Everywoman. We see her struggles, her awareness, and the different ways she's being hurt by her partner. In ten scenes, the characters are well-rendered and there's strong moment-to-moment scene work. What happens when you lose your agency over your body, your reputation, your life, and your rights? This is a painful, yet necessary feminist play.

If you're looking for an intersectional play that uses biting humor to critique academia, look no further than this fun play! This play does not hold back any punches and I encourage directors who work in universities to consider this play for their season.

I highly enjoyed this heartbreaking play about female friendship, mental illness, and honesty, told with two sets of relationships. Guilt and faith also come into the relationships, and the writer is asking all the right difficult questions.

Like Julie Z., I also had the pleasure of seeing this reading at PlayPenn and enjoyed the comic book/horror style this play uses to take on gentrification. Enjoyable twists and turns as an invisible man fights off the "zuburbanites" (zombies + suburbanites) who are cannibalizing the neighborhood (and all the gluten-free baked goods). Fun!

This clear, relevant play, refuses to give easy answers, but it will break your heart and leave audiences discussing the issues. This play grabbed me from the start and has stayed with me a year later, and I hope it quickly moves to production, as it's a story we need to hear.

Webb knows how to create a vivid, theatrical world to capture those difficult emotions of loneliness, loss, and separation. She knows how to do it with humor & a buoyancy that lifts us up. This small cast play would be great for a company that may have a lot of tech industry folks in the community, as the plot explores afterlife in social media. When is a sister ready to take down her brother's FB, tweets, and Yelp posts---and does she have a right to? Or should his presence linger online? Tough choices; good writing.

A play about just one of these fierce women would be a party, it's a joy to encounter all of them at once! This is a play where Marlene needs the support and wisdom of the ancestors, and we're along for both the fun of that and the complicated answers they bring to the table. I also encourage educators to take a look at this play---great roles!

Don't we all wish the adult world would keep it's promises? I loved encountering Jess on her journey to understand why she wished to be a Mastodon while the other little girls wished to be pretty princesses, and the troubling discoveries she makes about Clarence who turns into his childhood wish of being secret agent "Clint". It's a fantastical journey, full of fresh humor, with a playful ensemble.

Gripping, immediate, tense as the two parents dig through the sand for their murdered children. I was really along for this emotional ride as I felt for their deep grief in being a part of a terrible history. Enjoyed the twists and turns, the themes of space/stars/desert/an empty heart.