Recommended by Jillian Blevins

In this prescient and affecting 10-minute play, which contains more twists and turns than most full-length thrillers, Rachel Feeny-Williams asks a pointed question: how well do we know our loved ones, and what would we do to protect them? Her parable brings to mind an oft-reignited debate, currently in the news once again: does the impulse to defend someone we love accused of abuse, make us culpable? Should our loyalties lie with victims we don’t know, or with those we love who may contain hidden monstrousness?

PIT’s has terrifying premise, ripped straight from the most disturbing, bingeable true-crime doc you can imagine: you’ve been kidnapped by a psychopath, thrown in a pit, and held captive with no hope of escape. Somehow, Daniel Prilliman makes it hilarious. Between pop culture debates, brain-teasers and so, so much poop talk, PIT explores some really heady stuff: stasis and disruption, rebellion and acceptance, identity and anonymity. This well-paced existential mindfuck will crack you up, make you cringe, and stick with you long after its well-earned, shocking end.

Full of brilliant satire and piercing truth, MAN AND WIFE picks up where Edward Albee and Thornton Wilder left off, telling the story of our struggling country through the parable of a struggling marriage (we even get a direct Skin Of Our Teeth shoutout, in case we were unsure of the playwright’s influences). Goldman-Sherman’s characters begin as archetypes, but over the course of 100 pages and 25 years, we begin to see the contradictions, the complexities, the cracks where humanness breaks through the molds the world has told them to fill.

Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos offers us a well-constructed, wildly theatrical puzzle: the perfect kind, not too easy to solve, with just enough clues to keep driving us to figure it out. And of course, once all the pieces slide into place, the picture right there in front of us, it seems so clear all along.

With echoes of Williams, Dickens, and Doyle (plus a lurid Penny Dreadful or two) SDOAMW will satisfy history and literature lovers; but you needn’t have an interest in Victorian serial killers or the Southern Gothic to be intrigued by this feverish mystery.

BLOWHOLE is a witty, subversive, raunchy, feminist triumph. Kantor’s nautical, Edwardian setting for her Lysistrata retelling is unexpected and somehow absolutely perfect. Her characters leap off the page, embodying diverse perspectives on love, sex, gender, motherhood, politics and purpose—I’m a bit in love with every single one of them.

Aly Kantor’s intellectual agility and artful use of language and metaphor are dazzling, and amidst her ribald puns and double entrenches lie startlingly moving moments of emotional truth. At the heart of this sex farce lies a universal human need: to be seen and understood.

In this resonant retelling of the Medusa myth, DMB combines a reverence for theatrical tradition with a modern point of view. The result is magic. Blue’s use of formalized, heightened language sets his Medusa apart from her (many) other modern reimaginings; the iambic pentameter is natural and effective, never overwrought, and the gods’ prologue and interstitial episodes both evoke classical structure and comment on the ways that greater forces impact our little lives.

Especially powerful is Medusa’s simply drawn, very real cliffside crises as she contemplates ending her life and is saved by compassion and love.

ABORT: THE MISSION is a screwball caper comedy in the vein of A Fish Called Wanda which takes on draconian abortion laws, regressive social politics, and intergenerational tensions. This unlikely marriage of tone and content is exactly what makes this play so successful; the seriousness of the stakes believably drives Feriend’s characters to the increasingly absurd lengths that farce requires, and we’re laughing right up to the moment we stop and realize how unfunny the state of our democracy actually is.

A master-stroke of purpose-driven comedy with an urgent message about the fight for women’s lives.

With soaring, slam-poetry-inflected language and deep empathy, 18 invites us into the hearts and stories of two teenagers whose lives are upended by racist policing and mass incarceration. Buckley’s play challenges us to truly see the victims of a system that disproportionately impacts young men of color by giving voice to their dreams, their fears, their souls.

The use of heightened language in 18 is powerful, revealing truth in a way that only poetry can. Work like this is proof positive that verse drama has a future in American theatre.

Matt Barbot’s intra-community debate about representation, stereotypes and appropriation is wrapped in a charming little romantic comedy that’s sure to make you smile—whether you love West Side Story or hate it.

Language is alive in DRAWBRIDGE—not only for Mallory Jane Weiss’ characters, who discover the power of naming their feelings, but for us, as Weiss’ original metaphors and playful, almost vaudevillian dialogue remind us not to take words for granted.