Recommended by Ricardo Soltero-Brown

I'm almost at a loss for words due to how much I like this writer; Carnes has smart, tight, tense dialogue. It's simple, yet dense, filled to the brim; actors are given everything; it would be a lively discussion if anyone wanted to change something. Seriously, give this your all. There are non sequiturs here that make the case for non sequiturs. Drama is everywhere, Carnes must know this, it's in a mini fridge, it's in fruit, it's in a door-knock, it's in self-declaration (no matter how trivial). What a fun playwright, this Rachael Carnes; sensitive, insightful, hilarious.

Rachael Carnes must be cut from the same cloth as Donald Freed. I did not see this coming, this is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite shorts on NPX. Normally I'd write a kind of essay or review, but I can't ruin it. This is brilliance, this is sheer artistry, this is late Harold Pinter and all Sarah Kane. Personally, this play broke my heart. This is true, militant, Quintilian satire. Carnes gets Ronnie and corporations and AIDS and hypocrisy and journalism and Randy and method and science and citizenship and all of it right. This is a perfect play.

Best friends annoy each other, even when they're trying to pay a compliment. That's the first of many insights this sly short by Austgen addresses. This is as good as any play you can cite, and any reason you could use as proof, that sometimes, if you have the right ones, you just have to let the actors loose. Shel is a dream, a showcase; and Erin, I'm pretty sure we've all been there.

Bohannon's play is full of care and affection for fandom, but it's also a poignant, solid short on two young men reconciling with the change of perspective that accompanies adulthood. There's no shame in the fact of someone's love for fiction. It tends the garden of abstract thought, and teaches us to relate.

My favorite playwrights today include Caridad Svich, Crystal Skillman and, yes, here, Elaine Romero. Listen, I recommend them all, particularly 'Title IX', the scope is dazzling and devastating, but 'Mother of Exiles' is a worthy introduction. This playwright is among the ranks of María Irene Fornés and Naomi Wallace. She also has a keen eye, the Arizona Theatre Company is doing impressive work. Latinx playwrights, please, take note and submit. As for 'Mother', the first line should grab you. You may also have noticed I have an interest in plays about education; imagine if Cormac McCarthy wrote one.

Greg Burdick's experience as a teacher comes through, giving this play about the education system an authenticity others don't always have. The setting is one I've had a particular fascination with seeing dramatized. It's incredibly difficult to do. Though ultimately sympathetic to both teachers and students, like the best of Drama there's two or more kinds of right on display, sometimes to comical effect, sometimes to tragic. Schooling has long ceased to be about learning, so what's it about? Burdick has a massive point here. This is really one of the best uses of academia as political playground I've read.

McMahon is a playwright of depths we don't usually care to acknowledge. He's a sort of Spielberg among playwrights. You have to see it. You have to hear it. You have to let yourself go to sentiment, because that's his whole point. And he's right. He's correct. 'Sound and Vision' is about a character yearning so about what his life is, about its meaning; and for you and I there's literally no point without the presence of heart. This is old school, but also minimalist; it's John Ford. It's textbook. This is Craig Lucas on the best of his days.

I don't have the word count to quote Samuel Beckett on what theatre should be, but - aside from audience - this's what I understood him to mean. I've been concerned with plot, however, dialogue is my true love, and both are married here. Still, when I come across this kind of poetry, this rhythm, I don't really give a hoot about anything except the honesty of the actors. Brian James Polak has taken irony, bitterness, despair, desperation, and wound them tightly into a story about Time and Space, funny enough, those two things we forget about in our continuum.

I won't write who's who in my family; I'll write about the life Diaz-Marcano has delineated for the stage. His patience and empathy for these kin, their passions, sentiments, is honorable and expemplary of the most notable naturalists in recent Drama; think Hellman, Cruz, Letts, Shepard. It's best when he's just letting them be. It's a respect and responsibility not often seen in Latinx theatre. I hope Elaine Romero gives him a look. Baseball broke my heart as a kid, but not like this play does as an adult. I, like many Puerto Ricans, am not sure what I am.

Wyndham gives us another gem, one among his best. This is the kind of character who makes you smirk hard and leaves you jazzed, who says what is wished to be said, not what should be or would be. It really never gets any more fun than that, not for an audience, an actor, director, you name it. I wonder what's in this man's coffee; this and several other questions will laugh you up during any angle or period of analysis. Some other questions will probably give you significant pause, maybe even fear. That's what makes Wyndham's work particularly remarkable.