Recommended by Ricardo Soltero-Brown

Lee Lawing does a fine job here of tapping into the plight of the poet, the poet who is forever interested in where they are, as Pinter says, "eternally present." How apt that this funs upon the afterlife. Drink, play, connection, all are a coagulation, of sorts, of the subjective becoming objective, or the objective becoming subjective. A beautiful, coy, open, handsome observation of friendship; Lawing messes with the idea of how aware one is with their circumstance and being. Clever and remarkably, surprisingly, joyful, even life-affirming, despite its inspiration. Inspiration, yes, perhaps what the play is about.

It certainly helps that I agree and identify every which way with Diana Burbano's Marie, but once she starts talking about laughter I started smiling, nodding my head, and my heart became grateful. This woman oozes with wisdom and perspective and not an ounce of either is cynical, and that's the trick. The whole thing culminates into a wonderful final paragraph. There's a lot in here that speaks for why I do things the way I do them, and for that I thank Señora Burbano.

We don't talk enough of Asher Wyndham's skills in genre. Tragedy is people trying to do the right thing and failing. Comedy is people misbehaving. This monologue makes a wonderful mix of the two and is therefor a dark comedy. Wyndham's character takes us for a ride with what becomes clear as manipulation, an ulterior motive. The laughs are uncertain yet surprising and we are left to decide how noble this man-child is, it's like he's talking to his mom. There is an absolutely fantastic punchline!

This play opens with some of Hageman's most effective character work and leads to some of her best poetry yet. A play about the power of community responding to injustice and tragedy, while also a play about unnecessary loss and unasked for positions. Sad and inspiring.

Mental health, there are a great deal of people who couldn't have done anything about being born with...something. In another time, another country, they would be shackled. So many if us confuse the heart and the mind. And the soul. There's plenty to do now about living with...something. Gonzalez is a clever, sly, even playful, playwright. He subverts innuendo with message, a noble task.

I heard a conversation not unlike this only two days ago amongst children who could not have been older than 11, 12. A group of four. These are the conversations children are having before the fact, on their way to and from school, to and from home. Hageman's writing runs like a river of truth, disturbing and humbling.

It's the damnedest thing, intimacy. Just when you're convinced you've opened up everything to be seen, you must admit you haven't. And you would never have come to that realization if you hadn't just been asking the other to open up. It's the damnedest thing, the strangest of cycles. The character here travels that cycle in memory, reminding me that one of the milemarkers is shame, which reframed the whole journey for me. Or reminded me. This work is very living, very candid, it's like sitting for a few minutes at a cafe table in the eye of a kaleidoscope.

Three siblings stuck in a "childhood" (even by fit of their clothes), equivocal to the world they've been brought into, remember, reflect, and reckon with its violent nature, while doggedly attempting, through repetitive difficulty, to accept, believe, and illuminate what good they were apparently told it has. Humor and an arguably appropriate irreverence veil a deeply pained dislocation of existence, engendered by an abusive father; his proportions are of Greek myth, pertinent to child survivors of such houses and upbringings. With mysterious, maddening, cyclical perspectives, they dare to play games with an ever-shifting reality that is under an uncertain control.

Wyndham's one-act monologue 'Manny Aquino' begins with a deft stroke of pretend, apt for themes and focus rendered by an immigrant taxi driver in the United States. What follows is a breakdown of illusions, including living on a dying business, civil rights in a police state, even the sanctity of one's name, that is, identity, and by implication, culture. All of this has Manny shifting tones and moods, variously comic, tragic, etc. Notable that he's talking to a character from England. The structure navigates through several different definitions of the word "dream." This is a bold play, searching, showing, spurring.

Audiences were loving playwright Irene L. Pynn's Critic's Choice winning play at the 2018 Orlando International Fringe Festival, engaged with Hawel's existential angst, narrative Easter eggs, and an absurd domestic serio-comic nightmare; it's like Wendy Wasserstein having a fever dream. Themes are driven home by monologues reflecting on, and scrutinizing, the purposes and products derived from a working life, that is, as opposed to those deriving a life's work. Brimming with egos spanning the spectrum, cultural references, and a dogged deconstruction; Pynn keeps the play accessible, elevated, and knowing.