Recommended by Jennifer O'Grady

  • The Thought Doesn't Count
    3 Oct. 2018
    How I love Emily Hageman's work. Hard to believe anyone can write a play with a sock monkey and make it anything more than a joke, but Hageman has used the prompt to write a beautiful play about a couple's unspoken grief. So much happens in just a few pages thanks to the skill of the playwright. Audiences will be moved and absorbed by this play, as I was.
  • Make It Up
    17 Sep. 2018
    Another terrific play from Hageman, who has such a gift for writing realistic (and very funny) dialogue for teenagers. In this short play a group of boys cast in a show are reluctant to use stage-makeup (considering it too "girly") but slowly change their minds as they begin to understand the power of transformation. Powerful.
  • Fairy Tale Career Aptitude Test
    17 Sep. 2018
    So funny, imaginative, and spot on. This play would be a joy for anyone to perform and would so much fun for audiences of all ages!
  • The Cages We Build
    10 Sep. 2018
    A beautiful, moving play about how easily and thoughtlessly (and sometimes intentionally) we mess up our children. But the play carries the important uplifting message that each of us has ability to alter our own course in life. Hageman's very powerful and theatrical script could be performed beautifully by and for teens, but can be done just as well with adult actors too. I would love to see it on stage. (Note: This is a playwright to pay attention to.)
  • Back Cover
    8 Sep. 2018
    A beautiful, theatrical, imaginative and very heartfelt play that would be a joy for teens or adults to perform. Hageman has a tremendous gift for capturing the voices and personalities, the emotions, conflicts, confusions and desires of teenagers and making them very real and palpable on stage. But her adult characters are just as powerful and complex and this play is no exception. I'm always excited to see what Hageman will do next!
  • How to Get a Girl!
    30 Jul. 2018
    I love this play, which skewers stereotypical (but often all too real) ideas about women in an unusual and imaginative way. It's fun, funny, theatrical, and really brave, and will get any audience thinking. In fact, the audience has the potential to participate by providing the "laugh track" for the action on stage (though Hageman leaves that choice up to her collaborators) and just that alone is, I think, a pretty brilliant way to get the play's message across and enable an audience to have fun at the same time. Read it and better yet, produce it!
  • A Humble Path [a monologue]
    24 Jul. 2018
    Harrowing yet full of truth, and with a surprise ending, this powerful ten-minute play is utterly engrossing as its only character, a seemingly mild-mannered man, unspools the story of his life for an unseen person who, we learn, isn't there by choice. It's hard to stop thinking about this play. I'd love to see it performed.
  • I'm Having the Worst Day
    24 Jul. 2018
    This is a moving, surprising, and heartfelt piece about loss that would be a gift for any young actor.
  • Water
    23 Jul. 2018
    A taut, terrific one-act about privilege and power, and with a deliciously surprising plot twist. Hovanesian is expert as showing us a situation that seems ordinary but isn't, and then gradually infusing it with an increasing sense of menace until the rug is suddenly pulled out from under us. I would love to see this play on stage.
  • Basketball: Abridged
    15 Jul. 2018
    You know when you read the subtitle "Fifteen Minute Choral Reading Play" you're in for something special. This play is an utter delight: surprising, fun, moving, unusual, and just terrific. This play would appeal wonderfully to general audiences, but beyond that, anyone who feels in any way reluctant about theater should read or see this play as it will change their minds about what theater is and can do. I love this one!

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