Recommended by Alexa Rowe

I have read every single one of Femia's plays, but somehow I think this one is my favorite. This play is absolutely outstanding in every single way. I would kill to see this beautiful and emotional and funny and sweet play about a sex shop staged. The set is just as much a convention of the play as its strong female characters.

To follow up a play as beautiful as Ivories is a very difficult act to follow when Ivories stands alone so beautifully. Cavities does not require you see or read its sister play, Ivories, and holds its own marvelously. I didn't think it'd be possible for me to love a play that has "strip marbles" as a plot point. I can imagine in a few drafts this play will be as impossibly strong and fulfilling as its knockout first act. This play is going to be something really special and even more horrific.

This is one of those plays that feels like it should be a movie but also inexplicably belongs on the stage. Both a parody of Scott Pilgrim-esque manic pixie dream girl pop culture films and commentary on the damage it's done to society, Daxton on the Night Shift at 7/11 jumps through time to define womanhood in our century, interrogates the Michael Cera actor archetype, and demands that comedy as a genre in film does better to be less problematic. It punches up and succeeds in every way.

I saw a college production of The Death of a Supernova last week, and it was absolutely marvelous. Riley's writing tends to focus on choosing to be oneself even when the world around you demands you do not, and it is packed in a punch with this beautiful short story about a rock star's life told in rewind.

I love any plays that so thoughtfully and craftily depict post-traumatic stress disorder. This tightly woven docudrama is absolutely soul wrenching. There were moments my heart lurched as I read through the pages. brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

This haunting, hilarious romp of a play takes us deep into the triangle of North Carolina and wrestles us through bible belt politics, trans identity and coming of age through... vampires? Somehow McCarthy manages to blend the bittersweet theme of growing up with a sibling whose bad choices you cannot control but love anyways, finding love in a town that repels against you, and hilarious anecdotes on LGBTQ joy. It's both tragic and heartwarming. This play is also so so so ready for the stage.

I'm honestly convinced there isn't a genre that Riley Elton McCarthy can't write. This psychologically unwinding and devastating play dissects platonic relationships in the LGBT community and what stories we wish to leave behind, as well as how we tell the stories of those who've been left behind without a voice. The highlight of this play is Freddie Mercury's 10 minute monologue at the top of act one, but the genre jump in act two is one of the best I've seen pull off such a dramatic shift in tone. This play is, in a word, luminescent.

This deeply affecting and brilliant play traces two young queer people on a cataclysmic struggle through power dynamics from the time they are born to the destruction of their marriage, and maybe even themselves. When one says, "trans people should tell their own stories", I certainly think of this play. A powerful two-person force of nature with sharp, crisp, and personable storytelling, and one that I would love to see return to New York.

This is certainly one of my favorite plays that I would kill to see fully staged. A brilliant look into intersectionality and unabashedly unafraid to examine the microcosms within the black community and beg to question when divisions are just that-- divisions.

This play's power lies in its compelling truths about the grieving process in loss and charts paths that lie in complication and honesty. Beautiful, sparkling, and poignant dialogue.