Recommended by Steven G. Martin

Sometimes we cannot face the world for any number of reasons. Steven Hayet understands this truth. Sometimes what we need from friends isn't advice or strategies, but understanding and camaraderie. Hayet understands this truth, too. "Dinosaur" is a concise, short play that show those truths on stage.

With "BOB: A Life in 5 Acts," Peter Sinn Nachtrieb has written an epic, theatrical exploration of the American character -- complete with victories and setbacks and further setbacks, disillusionment, reversals of fortune, and acceptance. It's like a tall tale or other legendary story with its huge themes, grand scope, and intimate moments. Find it -- like I did -- on Dramatists Play Service. Read it, produce it.

This is the best of McBurnette-Andronicos's plays to date, which says a lot.

Her world building is crafted through personal research and investigation of location, time and mores. All her characters are women with agendas, weaknesses and strengths whose own decisions ultimately help them reach -- or not reach -- their goals.

What sets "The Hall of Final Ruin" apart is Doña Sebastiana -- Death herself -- in the cast. This wall-breaking, all-knowing and all-present character brings humor and theatricality, and opens up the play to themes of legacy, well-led lives and deaths, and redemption.

Highly recommended.

How do you tear at an audience's heartstrings?

If you're Ian August, you confine Paul -- the protagonist of your one-man, one-act "Brisé" -- to a single action in a single setting, not only suggesting that the options for his life are becoming limited due to dementia, but also to return to the highly detailed central motifs of Paul's love of music and dance, and his relationships to his lover and his mother. We watch Paul's decline through these patterns and, because we have known him at his most vibrant, we're emotionally torn because we understand what he has lost.

A 10-minute farce with international scope. Ian August does his ridiculous best to keep protagonist Eleanor from achieving her goal: to purchase a print of "Nude Descending a Staircase." It's a well-constructed comedy with pattern, wordplay, absurd logic and theatricality to tell the story: the kind of theater I especially enjoy. This is another winning short play by August.

The stakes couldn't be higher and the chicken-fried steaks couldn't be priced lower in Ian August's comedy "Frozen Foods." Carol and Linda are terrific foils -- a woman of thought, a woman of action -- and August is especially good at taking the audience through Carol's twisted, yet logical to her, realizations about God, the universe and existence.

Carnes has written a gem of a play. Admittedly it's a black diamond with sharp edges that will cut you and make you bleed, but a gem nonetheless. "Everybody Hates Mariah Carey" is a terrific dark comedy that cuts through the treacly twaddle associated with a lot of holiday plays.

DeLanna Studi's "Flight" shows the importance of knowing who you are. It affects not only how an individual lives day-by-day, but how historically mistreated people survive generation-by-generation. Quoya, the protagonist and a member of the seventh generation of the Cherokee Nation, is at a crossroads wonderfully constructed by Studi's dialogue and action. I would love to follow her journey further.

Watching a performance or reading of this play really brings out the warm feelings between the characters. The banter & dialogue soften the characters who -- while doing some bad things to a third person -- really do care about one another. I realized this upon watching a virtual reading by Tiny Theatre on Facebook.

Mark-Eugene Garcia's dark comedy is funny and eye-opening because of the dimensions of these two people. Produce this play and discover it for yourself.

Schatzie Schaefers infuses light and cheer in the institutionally encouraged bonhomie at Cafe Gratitude. There are clever names for the menu items and the daily affirmations made by customers and workers. But Schaefers shifts past this to provide a quiet, direct, simple climax -- one that shows the importance of direct, human connection during times of sorrow, loss and grieving. This is a generous, open-hearted play.