Recommended by Christian Flynn

Conventions of good taste in theatre would tell you you shouldn't make a play this plotty. They'd say plays that have this many twists and turns are tedious and would work better on the screen. Pay those "well-made-play" rules no mind. Upon reading "You Have Earned Bonus Stars", the reader's glad they're being pulled along through a journey rather than sitting through another living room or debate play. It forces the actors, and director to take chances, make decisions. The play snakes into dark places—places darker than one would expect. But I like that kind of thing.

What I love about this play is not it's well-made-play elements: it's deftly crafted structure, complex characters, snappy dialogue; or even its fantastic exploration of the controversial topic of assisted suicide. What I love about this play is it's grindhouse elements—it's willingness to genuinely shock the audience with how far it will go. This is a brutal, bloody and fun play—it owes just as much to Sam Rami as it does to Lucas Hnath. It GOES THERE and has elements of the drawing room as well as the slaughterhouse. I wish there were more like it.

Gorgeous. Written with not just a thematic lightness but a spiritual lightness. Sickles' decision to end the monologue with the parent stopping mid-sentence to address the kid who's come in speaks volumes about this character. More than any line or scene could. A marvel of withheld information

This character is someone you could meet any given day. You probably meet all the time. This character is the reason I left the suburbs and don't plan on returning.

Bureaucracy makes bastards of us all. So many of our laws, capital structures, and cultural restrictions force us to look at lice for everything but what it is — an exchange of empathies. We're forced to treat each other transactionally. Forced to take emotions out of everything — even the most emotional things. Tragic...

Brutal. Important. Pulls no punches.he great thing about the twist isn't that it feels like it's something that the playwright is pulling on you — it feels like something constructed by the character. She uses specific language and tells this story in a specific way — a way that makes you horrified at the "kidnapper" — a way that puts you on her side. The horrifying part of this play isn't that Sister Constance wins — it's that her plea will likely win over the hearts of a large portion of this country. Horrifying. Read it.

"Well, you’re boring. You’re boring! You’re not curious. And you’re not the Velvet Underground okay, there is nothing bohemian or radical about living here anymore, this whole place has been paved over into Disney for people like us, because our parents can afford it."

A great meta-play that never gets lost up in the cleverness of being meta. Deals with relationships between young people in a very real way. Really gets how we relate to eachother and art.

Fantastic! Donovan is one of the funniest roles I've read on here. At the same time Soltero-Brown has a wonderful sense for the way people argue — the logical fallacies, the toxicities, the overstatements of harm (that one in particular he loves), and the legitimate offenses. He's nailed the subtle ways people shift behavior when offended. A comic epic. The second act reads like a straight double act comedy routine, the last act reads like a war.

One of the things that scares me the most is uncovering disturbing shit on the internet by accident. This play feeds into this fear, into the culture of disturbing content, into the world of reality TV, and his funny the whole way.

What a trip! Prillaman writes with the glee and "dare" of an adolescent playwright and the skill of a veteran. Hilarious. Truly funny. Every one of the playwrights worst impulses is indulged in — and then executed very well. A designer and director and fight coordinator would have their day with this. If you want more genre plays, more comedy plays, more silly plays, more ridiculous plays — not absurd like Ionesco but what-the-fuck like Tim and Eric — this play is for you.