Recommended by Sam Heyman

Written with love, humor, and just the right touch of weirdness, Guilt Trips & Mishegas is a richly curated evening of “holi-plays” that is sure to delight audiences, especially Jewish ones! David Lipschutz has written several standout short plays that will soon be classics for the stage. Whether you’re a theater with a tight budget for actors or you need roles for the whole synagogue, this cycle has something special to offer you!

Goretti is a powerful, incendiary, and healing play that understands that while many are more than willing voyeurs to the private suffering of others, good and safe listeners are hard to find. As trauma survivors become more empowered to disclose their experiences and reclaim power from their abusers, M. D. Schaffer examines the reasons why self-disclosure should always remain voluntary. Interpersonal conflicts, long-held resentments, and closely kept secrets are brought to the forefront of this play’s drama, executed with skill and empathy. Excellent work!

A bra-swapping farce (and so much more)! “stuffed” showcases playwright claire detloff’s talent for writing nuanced characters even while reveling in boob humor. This short play dishes out bra history, bust switcheroos, and more pancakes than you can stuff a bustier with! Lovely work.

A play like a slow moving train wreck that inexorably hurtles toward its conclusion - but on the way, like in any of our lives, there is humor, beauty, humanity (warts and all). TRACKS by John Patrick Bray captures the melancholy and fading hope of adolescence and the ache of small town people — kids, mostly — unable to stop the changes that will inevitably tear the lives they know apart. This is a moving, dark, and magical piece of work.

Combining the best parts of “Much Ado About Nothing” and “As You Like It,” Monica Cross’ skillful Shakespeare adaptation “HERO DOGBERRY” is a marvelous feat of playwriting craft. The heightened language is never alienating and the verse is so seamlessly written you can focus on each vividly drawn character and tightly plotted scene Cross offers. A feast for Bard lovers and newbies alike!

“In The Slush” is a remarkable, twisty, hilarious, and horrifying delight from a playwright known for being adept with each of the above adjectives: Daniel Prillaman. From the way it pays tribute to horror/sci fi works of old to how it invokes the challenges and joys of the creative process in inventive and dark ways, this play does a lot with its premise, and will resonate with readers and audiences alike. Produce this play!

A lovely, specific, and universal monologue that meditates on how small we are and yet how much we get to be a part of in this world. Nora Louise Syran expands our minds with “I Am The Center Of My Universe” and we are better for it.

Music, history, family, murder -- all of these elements come together to create a unique and compelling whodunnit from Brenton Kniess. "Therese" is full of unreliable narrators, misdirection, and surprises, and at the center of it all is a victim who is as complicated as he is gifted. Kniess does an excellent job weaving together this mystery, playing with existing tropes while bringing them to his own conclusions. I can't wait to see what's next for this piece!

I don’t think I’ve read a play that has dredged up more emotion, elicited a harder sob out of me than The Wonderful Out There by Dave Osmundsen. It is a marvel, a heartbreaking tribute, a eulogy, a call to action. I saw myself most in Daryl, but I also saw so many loved ones, kids I went to school with, kids I taught, people I know and have known. This play will stay with me for a long time.

With “Clone,” DC Cathro has crafted a taut, morally trenchant thriller that is sure to grab audiences. The situation that these characters find themselves in is far from enviable, but Cathro’s tight plotting reveals the humanity — and cruelty — lying beneath the surface of each character’s facade. The subtle world building raises compelling questions about autonomy, ownership, and what society would do when faced with the realization that clones walk among us. An excellent, searing drama.