Recommended by Franky D. Gonzalez

Moral: This is what happens when you take your loved one to New Jersey for your anniversary.

Sylvia is in the right and I stand with her.

I return often to the power of this play and its many complex layers. An absolute marvel to behold, BARS AND MEASURES finds astounding ways to critique so many facets of our deeply flawed culture while still telling a heartrending tale of two brothers bound by music but separated by so many distances both physical and metaphorical. Idris Goodwin is a master at his craft, using music, dialogue, and social ills to show us the depth of emotion one goes through in the journey of life. It's a marvelous play. Read it and let the music wash over you.

There is much to admire in Straton's ENFERMA. His unique and inventive way of communicating exposition, his creation of distinct voices through his effective command of dialogue, his use of plot twists without it feeling contrived, down to his ability to touch on cultural problems and virtues in our society without being preachy. This play is relentlessly readable and human. His characters are complex, full-fledged human beings with complicated moralities, weaknesses, and inner-humanity that explores our reaction to crises of both self-created and bodily. A play to watch out for. I hope it has a long life on stage.

Jaymes Sanchez is an artist who takes folklore and returns it to its origins. He creates monsters onstage and forces his characters and audiences to see that monsters are the manifestations of the soul. It's our heritage, our guilt, our grief, our unique selves. In The Cucuy Will Find You we go on a journey of self-reckoning and understanding. In so many ways this play is a family drama, and in so many other ways it becomes your own story where your Cucuy lurks waiting to devour you whole. A beautiful, funny, painful, and revelatory play.

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.