Recommended by Ricardo Soltero-Brown

There are only three things to do in the Keys: drink, fish, and have affairs. Miriam and Alex are interested in the first and third. PMW drops hints from the beginning with literature jokes and references. A treatise at times on dramatic narrative, this play certainly tickles some intellectual fancies. That said, this is some of PMW's most accessible writing as it walks the tightrope from tension to comedy. Hitchcock said something about playing seduction like a murder. That watching these fully-developed characters navigate the complexities, subtleties, tactics, and vulnerabilities of sexuality is so engaging is PMW's major accomplishment here.

Lee Lawing traps Artem in a cell to ponder the power of freedom and speech with, variously, the participation of a rooster, a vampire, and a guard. Perhaps the cell is easier than dissent. Perhaps silence is easier than a cell, although it is its own cell. Lawing dramatizes this conundrum with such finesse it almost feels like a bedtime story. The dynamic is not unlike a more fantastical Stoppard. The cellmates are, in their own strange way, personifications of the outside, keeping Artem in constant debate. This is a great play about prisoners' rights and prison conditions as well.

The world at twelve years old starts to reveal its size, and puberty is no help. The imagination goes down alleys it's only become aware of. The great secret of adulthood: sex. With it, shame takes natural weight. Hansen investigates the fears and anxieties accompanying this vulnerable time with all the finesse of Strindberg, Churchill, McPherson, Havel, Lynch and, yes, McCay; but with his unique comic timing so often based in awkwardness. Not an easy tactic, but he accomplishes it for subjects spanning authority, suicide, sexuality, trauma, then with a second act that asks if it can be tastefully done.

An oncology intern's humanity is brought to its breaking point and, like the rest of us, needs an answer from somewhere, anywhere - atheist or not. Wyndham continues to make his characters, no matter their background or beliefs, as immediate and rich and complex as any dramatist in this country. His clever craftsmanship and dexterous abilities with language illuminate his characters' worlds so clearly that we can even smell them. Wyndham covers a lot of ground in this monologue, showing us how it all weaves together, from medical insurance to gardening, pollution, quality of life/home, to the Hippocratic Oath.

Right off the bat this character knows a bit too much about what he condemns. Wyndham, again and rightly so, puts us face-to-face with someone determined to take that stance over mankind. It's always confused me that someone would speak for god, how could they ever presume to know what he wants? The danger with extremism of any kind is that for it to stay alive it must get more and more specific, severe, dogmatic; it must build up the Other even through interaction with Others, or formation of an Axis. There are terrifying challenges and premonitions here from Wyndham.

You can feel the smile muscles cramping on this sub-maker's face. The kind of smile that squints the eyes. Little does this person know that their artificiality is about to come face to face with authenticity. Genuine love, for that matter. The absurdity of the employees reaction is, of course, lost on them, but that's a testament to Asher Wyndham's abilities to place an onion's worth of layers into any string of words. The kind of monologue that requires a commitment you'd expect in any Paula Vogel play. There is no American in this country Wyndham is afraid to tackle.

Claudia Haas has taken one of the great stories from Kafka lore and turned it into a lovely tale about the power of kindness and imagination, for dreamers of all ages. It has tones of Hans Christian Andersen, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Johann Peter Hebel, and Brothers Grimm. There are great insights into a young girl's values, the power of (letter-)writing, of course, and Haas uses them wisely in her inventions of a "young woman" (Lisette) and her coming-of-age, rites-of-passage, and friendships/relationships - paralleling them with Sofie's own taut/fraught childhood, brilliantly introducing her influence, and cleverly depicting them.

Fantastic little piece for two end-of-their-rope performances and a third, the interlocutor, who's doing their best to maintain an authority over the situation. A fine farce about people who don't understand the limits of their own business and the extent of their paranoia. So raving they are that Bhattacharya gets to play around appropriately with the dialogue, giving the actors a football field-sized playground in preparation for athletic reversal after reversal. Perfect example of what joys can be seen in a short play festival.

Interesting that all of the signs which say no are not taken as an answer. That Sullivan reinvents this classical tale to say so much about consent from a mute, inanimate, objectified piece of rock is clever, impressive, and insightful. That the young prince feels he is saying all the right things is a particular accomplishment on the part of Sullivan. Requiring an all-out gang-busters performance from an actor and a tone-and-time perfect performance from an actress, this play is equal parts Sarah Kane and Caryl Churchill. Rich stage directions make this impossible play impossible to miss out on staging.

A moving piece on memory and commemoration. Philip Middleton Williams continues to make remembrance the quicksand and intrigue it really is with the calculated efforts of the characters doing the remembering. Whether they prove unreliable narrators or victims of their own recollection I leave to the audience to decide. However, that it is a question at all is a testament to the playwright's sense of drama and craftsmanship. Particularly with how things ultimately play out (for posterity). Recovery is addressed in its many forms and how there's nothing final to it. A beautiful meditation on art as well.