Recommended by Franky D. Gonzalez

A horror story told with the same gravitas as someone talking about a cloudy day, which makes the story that much more terrifying. I can just envision being the characters receiving this monologue and staring at the Appalachian Woman with terror at how frank and straightforward this monologue is. McBurnette-Andronicos has an absolutely delightful gift on display here. She makes what would be the nightmares of the soul the mundane Tuesday’s of her protagonist. The effect becomes funny, chilling, and disquieting. I want to know more about the interesting life of this person who sees demons. Fantastic work!

Ali MacLean has created one of those unique plays where you are (internally or literally) yelling out at both Hugo and Gen to do the right thing or to not do the self-destructive thing, or to do so many things that you know you yourself wouldn't do just like Hugo and Gen if you were in their shoes. It's a play that is heart-achingly sad, raw, tender, and gets you feeling so much so quickly. I couldn't believe I was done with the play when I reached the last page. Ali is a playwright to watch and produce. Read this.

It's easy for casts exceeding three to have characters that sound the same, but in this dramedy, Molly Wagner has created five clear and distinct voices audiences to take in. Molly achieves spectacular effects turning laughter into drama of the highest stakes in a single line. It's a play that is both an amazing read and even better in production. Reaching beyond its assigned age-group, #CaseyandTommyGetHitched is the kind of play that will get audiences of all backgrounds and ages laughing, reflecting, and perhaps even inspire the empathy needed to bring down the preconceptions that too-often separate us.

The play would be silly if this wasn't so pertinent to our society today. It's a play that uses conventions of the absurd with social commentary to create something that is both all to realistic and familiar--especially if you're a person of color, a woman, or a woman of color--navigating the "good ol' boy" system of corporate America. Yet this is par-for-the-course if you've lived this. Where the play most shines is its attacking of false empathy. I won't spoil it here, but it rung very true and is a vital part of the conversation on fixing system inequality.

I feel as though Philip Middleton Williams has created an amazing Sci-Fi mashup while still also giving a critique of the consolidation of so many storied intellectual properties under the umbrella of a few parent companies. Capitalist critique interpretations aside, however, Chewie, Get Us Out of Here is a whirlwind of a play that has you wanting to look up each line in the play so that you make sure you don't miss a single reference. You'll have fun with this giant "party line" of a conversation between legendary characters who feel like their wires got crossed making phone calls.

Second Death of a Mad Wife lives up to its genre billing as a dark comedy. Bringing together an unreliable narrator and an unreliable listener, Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos creates a ghost story that leaves you questioning what's truth, what's fiction, what's madness, and what's gaslighting. Just as you feel you're coming to a kind of understanding, you're thrown another curveball in this wild ride in the most unexpectedly lush setting you could find for someone living in a squalid shack. Second Death of a Mad Wife is both unique and a delight for those who love the unusual and macbre.

Go Down, Moses by Dana Leslie Goldstein is a political work that asks us to really examine the hard facts of taking a stand and holding true to your beliefs. The play may be set in 1985, but it is as relevant to us now more than ever as we come to difficult questions about our ideals and tolerance for free speech. This play makes us examine where we are going and to really think about what strange bedfellows we may get when we protest/support something controversial. It's a play where you'll be debating long after reading or seeing.

Maximillian Gill has achieved something difficult with The Mimosa War. Gill's created a balancing act of a play where we get a hilarious lampooning of Mahattanites, a sobering look at what civil wars eventually devolve into, a dystopian nightmare, a look at race and religion in the context of survival and expectation, a pointed critique/challenge of individuals who claim to hold a certain belief and quickly abandon them for the notion of safety, and a love story--both platonic and romantic. It's a balancing act that needs to be read--or better yet seen in production--to be believed. Marvelous work!

THE ABUELAS by Stephanie Alison Walker is heartbreaking, funny, true, arresting and uplifting. It's a play that will take you on a journey that ties what seem like disparate threads together into a tapestry that serves as a reminder that the cruelty of tyrants and brutal regimes live long past their passing. Paired with THE MADRES, Walker has created works that highlight the invisible tragedies that are too often forgotten or overlooked by history and the public imagination and forces us to remember. A marvelous work, both a tribute to those forgotten and an immediate, relevant work of theatre.

There are plays that impress. There are even plays that shock you. Heroes of the Fourth Turning did both and something much more. It left me awed. I almost couldn't move from my seat in the theatre. Then buying and reading this play that outlined the evolution of conservatism from Goldwater to Bannon was like receiving something deeply true. Arbery has created a play that does not patronize nor seek to turn its subject matter into cartoon parodies like we see from so many other plays about conservatives. It's a play that won't leave you. I can't recommend it enough.