Recommended by Franky D. Gonzalez

Once the play starts, you go on a journey through extremities. It feels like playwright Alexis Scheer has taken footage from the lives of teenage girls in the early aughts and presented a documentary that helps us understand how we came to become what we are today. You can draw so many parallels to our current political climate from this play. You feel the truth of it, and you see the horror of what happens to those who become entangled to the idea of the cult of personality over one's own magic and strength. A remarkable, timely play.

Ren Dara Santiago creates a mythic play that is rooted in political reality in Something in the Balete Tree. This sweeping epic will have you captivated and laughing while also leaving you in disquiet and deep reflection. it's immediacy to us in the now cannot be overstated and yet, there is a timeless quality to Something in the Balete Tree that will keep you wanting to read the play again and again and long to see it on stage.

Unsettling, haunting, filled with both searing critique and heartbreaking humanity. Charly Evon Simpson has created nothing short of both a compelling piece of theatre as well as an indictment of yet another facet of the United States' original sin. Charly Evon Simpson is one of the best playwrights in the U.S., period. Full stop. Behind the Sheet is just yet another affirmation of her immense talents. Read it. If it's produced in your area, watch it. If you're wondering what to produce next season, this play has to be on your list.

In The Blushing Groom a couple who seem hopelessly opposite but impossibly attracted to each other have much to say on their eighth date, most importantly, whether a ninth date and beyond is in the cards. Obstacle after obstacle appears and yet the conversation continues despite everything working against a future for Marshall and Rowdy. Of course, Love, that ever beautiful and mysterious force that overcomes the insurmountable leads the conversation forward. There is a vulnerable quality to Weaver's writing of both Marshall and Rowdy that keeps you reading, hoping, and wondering till the end. A lovely two-hander!

There are profound questions that playwright Ali MacLean asks of us in SHE'S NOT THERE. Questions that will have people furiously debating long after experiencing this work. And that's exactly what a play like this should do to the audience. It should leave you in stunned disbelief and taking positions. It should make you question who you are, what you can endure, and for whom you can endure on. It's a difficult play, but it has a truth. The question is what is that truth in the hour of crisis when that figure visits your loved ones...or even you.

It had never occurred to me that memories and nostalgia are plays-within-plays until reading A TREE GROWS IN LONGMONT. For Philip Middleton Williams the memories become the literal stuff of dramas and bring audience, actors, and readers close to the playwright in unique ways. The play is meditative, melancholic, hopeful, somber, joyous, and ultimately heartfelt.

Written with love and layered with heavy-yet-playful dialogue that bends the conventions of what we expect from a play, take this work and read. Watch how the parts flow, and see in real time a tree filled with love comes to life before you.

There is a magic that comes with Nelson Diaz-Marcano’s work that speaks to something immediate and necessary. In Into the River I Went, Nelson examines society at all levels but through the lens of horror. You will be taken in by the tension and the menace woven throughout. And while the play is a relevant and socially conscious piece of theatre, Diaz-Marciano does not trade the important message off for good narrative. It still is a darn interesting story and a work that will have people in all positions of the theatre excited to bring it to life.

If all the world is a stage and we are but players, we may accept that on NPX we are a microcosm of that world. We are a world of playwrights, and Scott Sickles has imagined a world wherein characters are left without author. Unlike Pirandello's play, however, Sickles recalls the Messiah story of return after a time of absence. Then, if this is a microcosm of the world, is Weaver the promised one...and Sickles his prophet? But then...Oh, sweet baby Matthew Weaver...

Or this is just a funny play you should with Matthew and Scott's other plays.

There's the kind of writing that when read, makes you feel as though you're experiencing a memory of your own past. Philip Middleton Williams creates that experience for a reader (and indeed, for any actor who takes these delightful characters on). We go to that summer home. We feel connected to the characters and their situations. We feel the humor and the weight of melancholy. We experience summer by the lake in Michigan and remember a time lost, or a time reclaimed in the reverie of souls coming together again before the season changes and eras end. A wonderful play.

Look, to quote the play:

It’s strange.
And sort of wonderful.
And totally fucked up.

Seriously, it's a play that is pitch black in its comedy but you will not stop reading. It's frenetic and boisterous. It says so much about our culture and still leaves you in stitches. Liza Powel O'Brien has made a madcap comedy that is at once absurdist and realistic. It's some amazing satire and story-telling here in The Distinguished Gentleman. It's so totally crazy in all the best ways. Read this play!