Recommended by Kerr Lockhart

COOLER NEAR THE LAKE is written with an old-style type of craft, of the William Inge - Robert Anderson school, whereby the surface observation is so precisely accurate-- the casual joking, the deflection, the avoidance, the good manners, -- so well deployed as to demand that actors and audience collaborate to see through the characters' facades to their secret deeds and hidden wounds. The revelations come, followed by the struggle for understanding and a reconciliation that is natural, well-grounded in character and highly satisfying. There is much here for actors to work with and much for audiences to enjoy.

Deceptive at the start, this play begins like the usual tales of the usual unpleasantness; but patience, it evolves into a cleverly structured Russian doll of a play, with its two parts reflecting on and informing each other. Especially admirable is how it depicts the way a victim, instead of immediately retreating from or reporting their violator, often feels pressured to maintain a relationship, unwittingly undermining their own claims later. Not just a play-of-the-moment, but a meditation on how far one will go to pursue their dreams or to preserve their own self.

Dear Theater Producer, Is your audience thoroughly steeped up their eyeballs in NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, OLIVER TWIST, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, SWEENEY TODD and THE BEGGAR'S OPERA?Maybe TOO steeped in all those mysterious legacies, substitutions at birth, and colorful downstairs characters? Do you have a company of actors that would like to cut loose and show what they can do at full throttle? NELL DASH is not a sketch - it's a full-blown play with rich characters and a plot that twists into a merry rickrack of complications, miraculously and justly resolved at the end. Produce this play!

If your student actors are into Divergent and Maze Runner, and up for something challenging and different, B/V would be a wonderful choice. Taut, suspenseful, tough, with a Twilight-Zone-style reversal in the ending - it's amazing how Chelsea Frandsen gets what feels like a movie into a stage environment without strain or excess exposition. The violence and language may be a bit rough-edged for your school district, but a private after-school program would have no problem. Strong characterizations, economical staging. This futuristic parable of fear will speak to student actors and audiences in a way the old chestnuts can't.

Bonafede writes with a brusque, terse poetry, a poetry of concealment and indirection. In the way that Pinter's characters take long pauses, Bonafede's characters make jokes or exchange barbs. The result is that they are prickly, difficult, inconsistent in the way actual humans are, and uncooperative about being put into a box. Relationships aren't easy, and this play has no intention of making them easy for you. Yet there is something about the assuredness of the writing, the un-self-consciousness, the complete absence of post-modern reflexivity that makes the play feel utterly real and accurate minute to minute. And often funny.

“Lots of our patrols run across civilians that seem like good people but turn out to be Christians.” That quote describes the central conceit of CRUSADE, a play as lean, sinewy, tough, terse, and efficient as the military characters who dominate the story. Instead of a wordy debate about the perils of extremism, Bonafede dramatizes it, an extreme what-if that he makes plausible with the authenticity of the language and the economical delineation of character. Bold, shocking, but true to its own logic. A literal tour-de-force. Picture your audience with their jaws dropped beginning to end.