Recommended by Brian James Polak

Many of Sophie's plays are sincere explorations of f*cked up people trying to do the best they can. Road Kills exemplifies this as these complicated characters clean up the roads in hopes they can eventually clean up their own lives. I love how scene after scene of carcasses eventually inures us to death and how delightfully intentional that is. Sophie McIntosh is a real talent!

I read the line "I’m a wanderer Cathy, I dream oil paintings" and I knew I'd love this play. SELF HELP ME is painfully cringe and very very funny. It belongs in a time capsule for future cultures to study this era.

Hotdish is an unbelievably moving, funny, and surprising play. Paul Kruse is at the top of his game with this incredible play.

What an incredible work. Matthew put his life and heart on the page with such sincerity, honestly investigating how the center can hold in a family of disparate people. He writes about the roles and responsibilities we have for each other in our families and vulnerably reveals the wounds inflicted, self-inflicted, and received in trying to live a life both connected and disconnected from those closest to us.

Funny, biting, cringey, and simply real.

This play is so brilliantly crafted and structured. I immediately felt the mean girl menace in the beginning and, like the central character, I too was lulled into a sense of security thinking this will all be okay. I will be recommending this excellent play to everybody who needs an awesome ensemble piece for college-age actors.

OPEN is as much about magic as performance as it is about the magic of romantic love. Crystal shows us how love and its inexplicable mystery connects us and if we believe in it--if we remain open to its discovery--we can live in the joy that accompanies it. The Magician in the play wields magic as a tool as she yearns to save the life of her partner, the victim of a hate crime. In her attempt to overcome grief The Magician ultimately demonstrates magic is real. All we need is to believe.

There aren't enough words in existence to describe how much I adore this play. The characters' pasts are essential to the story yet it remains grounded in the present moment in such a satisfying way. At first you might think The Garbologists is an Odd Couple story but these characters are not so simply drawn. Both surprised me from one scene to the next. I feel so at home with them and wish I could ride along on their route. So much more to say but no space left!

This play is about how an outside force can both divide us and bring us together. I love the sci-fi framing of a story about people moving toward joy in the relationships with other and creating space for those around them on entirely different paths. In reading this play I am reminded how our neighbors can have more complex lives than we can ever know and if we can take a moment to see them our empathy can deepen... and vice versa.

Everything Audrey writes is packed with an emotional wallop. Evie and Star has it threaded through each scene. As I read it I felt inside the story with these sisters wanting to help them because Audrey is better than any writer I know at created space for empathy when characters need it the most. With Evie and Star she has crafted a mesmerizing journey full of joy and love and sadness and life.