Recommended by Steven G. Martin

A strange and wonderful blend of futility, philosophy, hope, uncertainty and acceptance. Beautiful, morbid and impossible to ignore, like a giant funeral wreath of black roses laid over a casket.

Actors, directors, designers and audiences will love a production of "Chicken is Condemned to Be Free." Bravo to Jesse Jae Hoon.

Beautiful yet sobering.

It's a beautiful example of oral traditions and folktales with language devices that enhance the story being told. It's sobering because an audience knows exactly when they exist in the timeline of this destruction myth and the role they play in it.

Ruben Carbajal's skills are on full display in "Myth."

Jillian Blevins deftly blends outstanding character adaptations, the looming negative feelings a lot of us feel during the pandemic, a beautiful extension of one of Ancient Greece's greatest dramas, and genuine humane care for people and the world in this wonderful one-act play.

"Izzy at Zoom Therapy" is especially strong in character and dialogue. And its ending is wonderfully visual and action-related.

A lovely particle of a play densely packed with ideas. "The Nihilists Victorious" serves as a definition and a criticism of Nihilism, it's got both silly humor and more than a taste of satirical bitterness ... all of this with a mere 10 words of dialogue.

When the tone shifts in this short play, it shifts HARD.

Gwenyth Fraser takes an audience -- and the characters -- from a pleasant outing with friends to a black comedy about cannibalism and survival to the briefest of glimpses into horror.

"Harvest (or: Survivalist Corn Maze)" would creep out an audience really well, especially if it could be produced in an immersive environment.

A beautiful little avalanche of a play, a dialogue that picks up speed and momentum and complexity after the most innocuous of starts. There's also a tidy button that made me laugh aloud.

There's an intense need at the root of "Burger Boy: A Monologue." Asher Wyndham has provided a talented actor and director enough leeway to create any number of characters: a fool/clown, a scary manipulator, even someone to pity. Or maybe all these traits and more can be blended into a single performance.

Terrific character writing.

A comic gem of a play of when the realization hits: It's not the world and all of society and your friends and loved ones and intimate relationships who misunderstand you, who don't get you. It's not them. It's on you.

From rant to realization, "Boardwalk Concessions" is a very satisfying character arc built in only a few minutes.

I like "Living While Asian" because we see two sides of Laurie, Christine Toy Johnson's protagonist. We knows she's lively and active, enjoying travel and a variety of interests through the belongings she talks about while connecting virtually with her friend.

Knowing what we know about Laurie, the audience will feel all the worse we they -- and Laurie -- realize that today isn't the day for her to venture out.

This is a terrific monologue for a female, Asian-American actor.

Bethany Dickens Assaf packs a lot of world building into this short comedy: It's set in the 90s, it celebrates "Star Trek" culture and the wild (yet innocent?) hinterlands of public-access TV. There's social strata world building, too, as we the audience know exactly the kind of problematic boys (yet innocent, sweet?) who call into Delia's and Bekah's show.

With that said, Assaf shines brightest in dramatizing that exact moment when Delia has to re-examine her friendship with Bekah, with no help from Bekah, unable to say what she wants to say so much. It's heartbreaking.