Recommended by Steven G. Martin

Scott Sickles breaks hearts -- his characters' and his audience's -- better than anyone. And there is such wisdom in "I'll Find My Soul as I Go Home" that Davey can't appreciate just yet because of his age and inexperience. It's heartbreaking.

"Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean" is a terrific satire/dark comedy. Even at the end of the world, does humanity take any responsibility for its impact? Lee R. Lawing suggests otherwise in this more-dangerous-than-you-expect short play in which people get their just desserts.

Elisabeth Giffin Speckman has written a workplace drama that is all about tension between the two characters, Tammy and Jerome. A lot of that tension is open -- quickly seen and defined, and perhaps even tossed aside: generational differences, educational and socioeconomic differences, too.

But those types of tension are merely foundational to where Giffin Speckman takes an audience and her characters. She takes every detail of the play's given circumstances to fashion a violent, visual, metaphor-filled moment that is genuinely chilling. There's danger in "Safe Passage" that is contemporary and feels all-too-prevalent in the U.S.

Sheila Crowley's "Rights of Springtime" is a wonderful play for a seasoned female actor. I love that Crowley uses the monologue form to spotlight the beauty of storytelling that transforms the speaker. There is adventure and delight and romance and all of the subjects that resonate so well with the oral tradition, but the subject itself it storytelling and its power: the richness of options and "What if?"

Also it's wonderful to find an older character whose aim is to spice up things and act accordingly, not whither and wane.

"Rights of Springtime" is deeply satisfying on many levels.

Read this play now.

Every moment, every syllable, every razor-edged choice Mark Harvey Levine makes in "Not Like Us" -- pay attention to the character names! -- raises my hackles. Levine shows us the evil intersection of racism, slavery, greed, corrupted egos, utter lack of empathy, and probably other gross traits of the privileged I can't name right now. But an audience can't avert its eyes.

This play is painful, like a blister. It's a shaming history lesson. It's a warning about the present. It's dangerous, acidic, and desperately needed. Audiences are going to be knocked onto their asses.

Bo knows football. Bo knows baseball. Scott Sickles knows character.

In "We Ride At Dawn," Sickles has created a brilliant portrait of a young person who probably can pronounce every dinosaur's name and the era they lived in, but now has moved on to obsessions with forestry, entomology, and (seemingly) Arthurian England. So rich is Mill's vocabulary and syntax, Mill's focus on revenge against a (perceived) slight is funny, charming, vaguely terrifying, and full of the most delicious ham.

Actors will love chewing the scenery and being bigger than any human has ever been in Sickles' brief monologue.

It's true. The males of the species don't think with their brains, they think with their aedeagus (look it up). Poor Franz. Lucky Madge.

Scott Sickles's "Head" is a high-concept, 1-minute comedy that plays with well-known insect factoids; it will tickle all audiences from the start, not just entomologists. Movement coaches and costume designers will relish "Head," as will the actors and audience members.

"Desserts" is a gift for two comic female actors. Devorah is much too smart for her own good. And Mimsy ... well, bless her heart. They are a terrific foil for one another.

Scott Sickles has written a very funny, very dark one-minute play that audiences will eat right up. And now I'm all hungry.

"Crater" is a lovely postcoital moment with a rich backstory, a surprising reveal, and an apropos metaphor wrapped in a bittersweet package. But maybe there's hope?

Scott Sickles knows the past -- personal and terrestrial -- leaves a mark -- figurative and literal. Archie isn't ready to stop examining his past just yet, but maybe this dramatized moment will lead to him moving forward.

I love plays in which the setting has an impact -- backstory, character, action, anything. In "The Taco Belle of Fruitvale," Oakland is very important -- it's the impetus for Belle's actions (Oakland supports Oakland) and creates a bond between her and Marcel.

Belle are Marcel are wonderfully rich, dimensional characters; credit Conrad A Panganiban's skills. Also for creating a script in which the lives of these characters will change based on the decisions they've made.

"The Taco Belle of Fruitvale" is terrific, and I hope it receives many productions.