Recommended by Matthew Weaver

This is lovely and heartbreaking and honest and unflinching. Kearnan captures so movingly the moment a person offers her heart to someone else, and the rollercoaster of emotions that follow. If an enterprising theater ever decided to devote a play festival to vulnerability, this one is a shoo-in, as it should be for any play festival that's just devoted to very good plays.

Warms my SOAP OPERA DIGEST/SOAP OPERA WEEKLY loving heart. Setting a play behind the scenes of a soap opera magazine is genius - wish I'd thought of it! - and well-earned by Ms. Hoke, who writes what she knows. As with any of her plays, these are very rich, well-drawn, heartfelt characters we relate to and like spending time with. Hoke's play is a knowing wink; about the storytelling medium she lovingly skewers, sure. But it's also acknowledgement of how human we all are, with our foibles and our desire for connection, no matter where we happen to work.

You know a play is good when you immediately begin plotting to develop a play festival just so you have an excuse to produce it. (Seriously, partner this with Emma Goldman-Sherman's TOILET PAPER and you've got the two most talked-about plays of the evening.) Vermillion's play is hilarious and biting and destined to become a mainstay at any evening of short plays.This is sharp, honest, hysterical writing with a serious bite and a hint of an absurdist bent. Seriously, put HE MISSES on and watch the men in the audience wilt under the knowing gazes of their significant others.

O'Grady surprised me with this play.
Not because she doesn't deliver the same reflective, heartwarming, heartwrenching turn of excellence I've come to expect. She does, and in spades.
Not because it isn't also hilarious and a marvelously unique concept. It is, and, again, marvelously so.
And not because she didn't make me think about life from the perspective of an everyday object that I hadn't really thought about before. (I particularly recommend her CAGE and CIRCUMNAVIGATION.) She does, although she arguably goes an additional step here.
I just didn't expect to have my heart moved by a refrigerator today.

Sickles revels in writing about the messy part of existence.
There is so much tragedy and loss and anger and grief in this play. It doesn't shy away from the grime and grit that is humanity.
And yet ...
As in any of his plays, Sickles so adeptly captures the great and mysterious beauty of that messiness as well.
This is a very real play. It pulls no punches. It is unapologetically lovely, hopeful and realistic all in the same marvelous breath.
Choose it for your festival and say goodbye to the last dry eye in the house.

Moss, so good in full-length plays such as OUR PLAY, is SO GOOD here, too, in this all-too-brief short that somehow spans an entire friendship and then some. This portrayal of Sam and Robbie's connection is small and quiet and intimate and yet epic, on the precipice of something potentially monumental.
Moss both makes us fall in love with them in the span of ... eight or nine pages. And then she only takes a mere one to two pages to completely obliterate our hearts, in just as quiet and intimate a fashion. A sure bet for any play festival.

Love stories rarely end the way that we want them to, rarely end the way that they should. Williams literally opens his heart for us in loving memory of Allen, and gifts us with this opportunity to witness and treasure their love story. It's deep and intimate and gorgeous and lovely and unflinching. All the answers to the secrets of the universe are here. They're right here. May these words find their way into the hands and eyes and lips of people who will embrace and honor them with their whole hearts.
Thank you, Philip. And thank you, Allen.

I had the pleasure of watching this during Spokane Falls Community College's possibly inaugural Bigfoot by Moonlight Play Festival (HOW COOL IS THIS AS A PROMPT??!?!?) No surprise, Hageman's entry infused proceedings with the depth of emotion we diehard fans have come to savor. The ending is both inevitable, surprising and unbelievably correct. Hageman makes it look effortless - it's not - and gently inspires us to elevate our own writing in similar fashion. That she does this with a play about Bigfoot, of all things, only makes us find her even more inspiring.

Simply lovely. Martin turns his - and thusly, our - attention to an oh so integral and yet so easily overlooked aspect of theater, and gives it its due, as only he can. Any Steven G. Martin play is a thoughtful, thoughtfully composed, reflection on art and life and beauty, but AN APPRECIATION is a master work. It's clever, but more than that, it's honest, but more than that, it's a revelation. And no one dares to test barriers and boundaries like Martin. (I know. I've tried.) Martin writes from the heart, and we can only marvel at the result.

Literally a Looney Tunes cartoon brought to life - Sytsma channels/inherits the spirit of Chuck B. Jones and gives us a marvelous tale worthy of Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote, only with the trickster character unseen, mentally filled in by the audience, which is a hell of a neat playwright trick. As joyous an experience as this is to read, I would imagine it's even more of a joy to behold as the madness unfolds. Recommend it to the most versatile, flexible and gifted performers in your local acting community. I certainly intend to in mine.