Recommended by Jillian Blevins

Theatre should always be an exercise in empathy; I can’t think of a more direct answer to that call than DAUGHTERS OF ABRAHAM. Bound by womanhood, oppression, and their common ancestor, Goldman-Sherman’s queer American Jew and Palestinian refugee seek to understand each other by entering each other’s lives and candidly discussing their struggles, joys, and differences. Especially moving is American Racie’s longing for more simplicity and community, despite the material luxuries she’s left behind. Neither character is a stereotype, nor a victim—it’s clear that like her characters, the playwright’s aim is understanding.

This play wrecked me. The theatrical imagery, the well-constructed mystery, the tenderly drawn adolescent characters—and most of all, the unflinching way it confronts the discrimination and cruelty faced by autistic/ND children.

Osmundsen’s parable resonates on a universal level—is the joy of life worth the potential, inevitable pain?—but his perspective as a neurodivergent playwright brings an extra layer of meaning and specificity to this devastatingly beautiful play.

I’m the parent of an autistic child; I read TWOT with him in my arms, shedding more than a few tears and promising to protect him. Powerful piece.

Lyrically twisted in the best way, HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS explores the ways we mythologize our own relationships. Cleverly exploring genre by casting his two couples as writers of different stripes (and all unreliable narrators), horror writer Darko and romance novelist Jezzie’s “how-we-met” story morphs from meet-cute to meet-funny, to meet-surreal, to meet-terrifying. Is Jezzy an answer to a prayer? A demon? A cursed maiden? Jones’ one-act ends right at the unsettling climax, its ambiguous ending leaving us wanting more. Poe would be proud.

In JANUARY 21st, DC Cathro’s characters face off against despair; one by ignoring the holiday season and feeding squirrels, and the other by listening, earnestly, even if he doesn’t fully understand. I admire the playwright’s ability to create conflict without cruelty. So rarely do gentleness and compassion get their due onstage, as it’s much easier to create tension (and too-easy edginess) by showing people treating each other badly. Cathro writes with nuance and empathy, capturing the delicate dance of navigating our own existential dread and allowing those we love to sit beside us while we do.

Like the work of art which inspired it, Monica Cross’s HELLELIL AND HILDEBRAND distills an epic story down to an essential moment. Heightened language, here, does so much more than root the play in the poetic tradition from which it comes: the propulsive meter evokes a steady (and quickening) heartbeat; the rhymed verse underscores the tragic inevitability of the tale’s end as we anticipate Hellelil’s final words. This jewel box of play is a perfect example of how formalized language carries and deepens meaning, and a strong argument not to lose the tradition of theatre in verse.

I dare you not to laugh at Emily McClain’s vivid trio of characters: a chain-smoking, foul-mouthed goat; a ruthlessly ambitious donkey; and a sheep named Carla who’s, well, a sheep. This barnyard tale of office politics and banal evil is an uproariously funny twist on Animal Farm, and every bit as dark.

This short—on its surface about a teen mechanical genius and her crotchety neighbor—speaks volumes in subtext. Through a disagreement about an old car, Murphy explores community, intergenerational tensions, grief, and hope for the future. Rarely can a play invoke 9/11 in a way that feels fresh, specific, and powerful. IMPLOSION does so, to devastating and thought-thought provoking effect, with the lightest of touches.

CORPOREAL PUNISHMENT, despite being a swift-moving, laugh-a-minute short, offers a smorgasbord of theatrical delights: an occult horror story! stunning reversals! a revenge plot! unlikely romance! existential dread!

Scott Sickles has a talent for sneaking depth and meaning into plays that feel like pure entertainment. This “spoonful of sugar” approach makes CORPOREAL PUNISHMENT a blood-spattered satire that slyly expresses the pain of feeling unlovable and invisible—and you may not realize the full effect until the laughter dies down.

“Not all stories are told in a straight line.”This nesting doll of a one-act may be the most aptly Jewish play I’ve ever read; its characters communicate through stories within stories within stories. They argue, contradict, and follow tangents like Talmudic scholars, seeking understanding, connection, and maybe Kabbalistic transcendence.

THE DYBBUK is a wholly original Holocaust story: unsentimental, even funny, and yet it doesn’t shy away from the inherent horrors. Pascal’s characters are far from monolithic—the diversity of the Jewish experience is well-expressed by her thoroughly human denizens of a ghetto. A thrilling ride.

Mother-daughter relationships are so difficult to capture; love and resentment, nostalgia and change, codependence and liberation, nurturing and smothering all live together in messy disharmony. YOU BEFORE ME somehow communicates it all through tellingly spare dialogue and one beautiful moment of magic.

This gentle, aching short transplants the Persephone and Demeter myth into a real(ish)-world homecoming of a grown daughter to her lonely mother—two juicy roles for sensitive actresses. In ten short pages, Marchant draws her world and its characters with great specificity and depth, and subtly asks how growth and change impact maternal love.