Recommended by Brian James Polak

This play deftly dramatizes the complexities of friendship, family, and love. The fractured narrative structure echoes the the broken-repaired-broken again relationship between these two characters who look outside for the thing they need, which can actually be found right in front of them. This two-hander shines greatly in the hands of actors with the depth and finesse to portray a complete human experience.

This is a beautiful, hilarious, and original play about overcoming grief and rediscovering yourself in the aftermath of tragic events. This play manages to be funny without losing heart, and touching without being syrupy. It is imaginative, theatrical, and fun.

This is a gorgeous and powerful and touching and surprising work. It's a play that draws you forward and never lets you get ahead of it. I love plays, like The Madres, that writes about an important piece of history from a micro point-of-view. Stephanie takes us inside the home of people touched by the brutality of Argentina in the late 70s. It's an excellent play.

I love this play. It's beautiful and poetic with humor that wonderfully surprising. It's a dark world the two main characters inhibit, but I love existing in the space with them, watching them try and put their lives together, literally and metaphorically.

Brave, imaginative, and yet beautifully simply. This deeply personal work about guns is no polemic. It's a story about the complicated relationships people have with guns, and exposes the audience to a point of view it has likely never experienced on the subject. It's a wonderful work that should be required reading for all Americans.

"Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea" is simply a beautiful piece of work. Read this play, attend this play, produce this play... do whatever you can to get into the same room with it. Nathan has a beautiful knack for toggling between the natural and the poetic, and he uses that skill perfectly to tell the story of a young man on the verge of adulthood who is searching for a long lost ancestor.

Is there a more mundane object than a chair? (Maybe a stool) But in Lisa's play we learn there is nothing simple about such an object. It can be beautiful and complicated, like the relationships portrayed in this intriguing new play. "Building the Perfect Chair" shows us how both love and chairs can be fragile works of art.

Steve uses his trademark theatricality to tell a rich emotional story with a gut-punch ending. Humor, surprises, and heart meld with the mythological and supernatural in this powerful work.

This play is certainly a period piece, but is in no way bogged down by historical exposition. It feels like a contemporary play while still feeling authentically 1800s. It's gorgeous and powerful and fantastically crafted, as all Callie's plays are.

A remarkable and vital play for our time. You feel it, in the rhythm of the scenes, in the rhythm of the dialogue, in the story Tearrance is telling. I couldn't be more excited about the potential of a play to take off and have a life in the American theater. This play will soar.