Recommended by Franky D. Gonzalez

What makes an icon? What cements a legacy? What is the past? What is destiny? What is the place of love for someone with ambition? What does it mean to long for a shining city in the distance? Xavier Clark's ICONS brims with these questions as an interview between an Icon and a Pulitzer winner becomes a fantastic exploration of the cosmos and the ultimate power of Queer Black Love's potential to change the world.

I never knew that Tuesdays at a bowling alley could be filled with so much drama, tension, and stakes! But don't be confused! As dark and dramatic as this play gets, there is so much comedy throughout this play. Each of the characters is complex, messy, and have equally compelling stories that spans gender, age, and backgrounds. You will go through the range of emotions with each of the characters and ultimately love this scrappy team of badass bowlers.

An immaculately crafted Southern drama that deftly weaves together various narratives that expose the deep traumas bubbling beneath the surface of a Southern family attempting to maintain a veneer of perfection and propriety in the hours leading up to an anniversary party. Davis Cowart takes the style of William Inge and Lanford Wilson to forge a new kind of domestic drama that feels refreshing yet completely at home in its time period.

Getting to read this meditative poetic play was such a privilege. Xiaoyan Kang weaves together a play that combines history, language, feminism, culture, heritage marriage, memory into a poignant and heartrending portrait of a woman at a crossroads of all the above intersections. An absolutely entrancing read.

Equal parts hilarious and devastating, The Play You Want is a razor sharp lampooning of both the American Theatre and of the marginalized artist desperate to "make it." I found myself relating heavily to so much of this play and felt myself wince so many times in empathy at the sacrifices and compromises made by Bernardo in this play. This play will hit you right in the guts as your sides split from laughing and your thoughts go to your own moments with family, friends, and colleagues that mirror the circumstances of this play.

Perez creates a play that is a beautiful cacophony of styles and ideas while still making sure that the plot doesn't get away from him. Alexander deftly moves us between stories, tones, and emotional moments that will let you feel both the pain and surrealism of a life in entertainment and entertainment representation. You will laugh at the absurdity, and good-natured ribbing at the theatre industry for those in the know, and for those who aren't quite familiar with the theatre world there is still so much fun to be had in this wild ride of a play.

With a title like "God Learns of the Death of Harambe, 2016 (colorized)," you become grossly fascinated and become pulled into a hilarious and unexpected vision of the divine. A playful piece of theatre that blends the world of memes with the notion of faith, grace, forgiveness, and ultimately offers a zany and hilarious interpretation why all of what we are experiencing/have experienced is happening. Alexander Perez pulls off off a wonderful balancing act that makes light of everything without crossing the line of the outright offensive. A well-constructed and fun play that should be experienced everywhere.

Love will always be marred by that horrible word, “Circumstance.” It is a matter of age, situation, sexuality, timing, obligation, and of family. Luis Roberto Herrera takes those very circumstances and creates three heartbreaking chapters that leave you wondering “What if?” and “If only…” Each character is wrought with dimension and detail. They have flaws and good qualities. They are tragic, comedic, and so Floridian you will feel the humid air and the cool water of the pool as they talk. A wonderful play about millennials who lived in a world at the cusp of, but still before, acceptance.

David Davila captures not only the intense drama of having five generations of Latina women in one household, but also the tenderness, the comedy, the hopes, aspirations, disappointments, and most importantly, the resiliency that comes from such a unique, beautiful household. THE MESQUITE TREE is billed as an American Tragedy, and that is true. There is a lot of tragedy layered into Davila's pages, but more it's a celebration of an oft-overlooked demographic and experience that occurs in this country. David has crafted a work of beauty that will leave you wondering and inspire awe long after End of Play.

A play that is as profoundly religious as it is boldly profane. Daniela Gonzalez y Perez blends belief, philosophy, mythology, reincarnation, love, revenge, redemption, and debasement into this wonderful treatise on who is and who is not worthy of forgiveness, love, and grace. You’ll be transported from the streets of NYC to different planes of existence as you follow Angel (an angel) and Chupi (the chupacabra) and their relationship to the human—who may well be more mystical than her two counterparts—Rami. It will leave you meditating on the nature of, well, everything. A marvelous play.