Recommended by Jillian Blevins

The best magical realism blurs the line between objective reality and world as experienced by its characters. FOR THE FISH possesses this dream-like ambiguity, and in doing so, allows us direct access to its characters’ tender, searching hearts.

The unspoken bond of queerness between Susanna and her Uncle anchors this play. The subtlety and specificity of their relationship stands in effective contrast to the surreally theatrical talking fish who threatens it. Houlker creates a strong sense of time and place with her expressive stage directions. Designers, puppeteers, and imaginative theatre makers will thrill to take a crack at it.

In CYRANO ON THE MOON, Monica Cross offers the pen to Roxanne, object of Cyrano de Bergerac’s idealized love. With two young nuns, she conjures an afterlife for Cyrano. Is it merely to memorialize him? To understand what she herself has lost? Or can Roxanne, through her writing, guide her lost love towards an understanding that will finally allow them to be happy together?

Uniquely theatrical and deeply felt, CYRANO ON THE MOON captures the spirit of its source material and puts Cross’ linguistic prowess and nuanced feminist perspective on full display.

Christopher Soucy’s play, like its titular Shakespearean fools, deploys every kind of comedy; witty wordplay, philosophical absurdities, pithy observations, and the obligatory dick jokes. Most importantly (and centrally to THE HOLLOW FOOL’S soul), the Bard’s canonical clowns balance humor with an underlying melancholy and incisive truths about human nature. In his multifaceted Stoppardian adventure, Soucy manages it all, and then some.

FOOL gallops along through no fewer than four Shakespeare plays, bringing their disparate fools together in a poignant understanding: that there is no higher honor than creating joy, and no greater folly than killing for power.

What’s more painful: maintaining a relationship that’s no longer working, knowing it won’t change, or ending it and facing the unknown without your other half? John Bavoso explores this relatable question through the myth of Prometheus and his unenthusiastic torturer. Full of witty references for fans of Greek mythology (my personal favorite: Hercules’ “12-step program”) and hilariously groan-worthy puns for the rest of us, PROMETHEUS SHRUGS is a tightly-written, wholly original fractured-fairy-tale of ennui and bittersweet endings.

Banjo + Shakespeare = perfection. I was lucky enough to see this piece performed at MRT in 2018. Gunderson’s metatheatrical autobiography invites us into her very real struggle to reconcile her conflicting feelings about her grandfather, with whom she shared a deep connection but differed from in many important ways (his holy text is the Bible; hers is Shakespeare). The storm of Lear’s madness is a powerful metaphor for her grandfather’s Alzheimer’s, and Gunderson’s transformation into first Cordelia and then The Fool allows her to try to enter his world and get answers about their relationship.

The mad genius of CS Jones’ work is how, even at its most bizarre, it remains grounded in emotional truth. The effect allows us to recognize our own strangeness, and to feel a bit less alone in it. That same push-pull between the stratosphere and the truth of the body (and the heart) is perfectly exemplified in this play.

THE LOVE ASTRONAUT’s film documentary convention allows his character’s diverse perspectives on the same moments to collide with that of their audience, reveling in the irony and contradiction created. A director’s playground, and a fight choreographer’s dream!

A SHARED CONVICTION works both as a commentary on audience expectations of older women onstage (and in life) and as a tremendously fun dark comedy in its own right. Martin’s tale of bad blood between old friends offers big fun for actresses, and great opportunities for a director to play with genre and tropes.

WTWGM is an achingly beautiful marvel of a play. Utilizing startling imagery drawn from the art of Frida Kahlo, McClain explores life and death, pain and comfort, creation and deterioration. The simultaneous tenderness and loneliness of caretaking is the pulsing, bloody heart of her story of mothers and daughters.

McClain’s Kahlo and reluctant time traveler Vivian are drawn together by mutual longing—Frida for a daughter, and Vivian for purpose, meaning, and the open-hearted nurturing she never received from her own mother. With tremendous sensitivity and evocative language, WTWGM packs two lifetimes of heartache into one powerful act.

ANY PORT IN A STORM is a sweet romance reminiscent of the best of John Patrick Shanley: that is, two broken people (with surprisingly complimentary damage) coming together despite their best efforts to push love away. Kantor’s storm provides high stakes and urgency, as well as an apt metaphor for the fear of heartbreak versus the fear of loneliness; it’s terrifying to drive recklessly out into the storm, and terrifying to face the danger alone.

NEON GLOWING NEW captures the anxious optimism of 1999—the feeling of endless possibility mixed with anticipation of the unknown as we hurtled towards a new millennium. With great humor and nostalgia, Vince Gatton recalls how that moment in time created a unique chaos in young people and in their families.

Having been a teen in ‘99, and now a parent who’s not nearly done finding myself, I appreciated the perspectives offered by both Kelly her gleefully dorky dad.