Recommended by Steven G. Martin

"Awesome" and "heroic" aren't the same thing, and Tyler JC Whidden clearly contrasts the two in this short play. These are strong roles for male and female actors, and the central monologue packs a punch with its emotion.

Whidden provides the audience with two, side-by-side, views of destruction. One, sudden and immediate; the other, a slow unraveling. Both are affecting.

The issue itself is a turning, twisting road filled with faulty logic and gaslighting, and Whidden does it justice with a play that is just as twisting and turning. This play is going to make everyone angry. Well done.

A beautiful inter-generational story in a single page. Cato's skill at character and dialogue shines, and the subjects of life, death, and family gracefully interweave. This is a feel-good script that I would love to watch performed.

I watched a performance of "Chase" on the NU Theatre YouTube channel. It's a wonderful mystery that allows an audience to infer a lot of the details. It would be a wonderful challenge for a female actor, too.

Adam Szudrich has created a memorable character in Ester - a woman in her late 70s who is uncertain, giddy, witty, guilty, romantic, adventurous, and in pain. Read this short monologue and you'll immediately understand why it's been produced so often and received so many awards.

DC Cathro's script is painful enough for traditional theatre staging. I have to imagine that watching Marty's and Mack's faces up-close via video would be emotionally overwhelming. Yet producing a video performance of "Daddy Mack" is a perfect choice because of the story's circumstances.

This is a painful play. DC Cathro has written a life-altering moment that permanently obliterates innocence and romantic naïveté. Marty and Mack both are changed when the facts are plainly laid out, and I was left wondering how they would progress in their lives.

I'd love to watch "What Kind of God" performed because the characters' tone and emotion entirely shift in reaction to a simple, direct action. Rose's finely honed skill at objective, presentation-like dialogue carries the first three-fourths of the play, but the ending provides a brief glimpse of the tumultuous passion beneath. It's a subtle effect that would play beautifully on stage.

Brent Englar's "The Soapbox" is surprising, upsetting, but also recognizable via extrapolating the path society and government is taking. Its theatricality and conclusion make this one-act play immediate for audiences, and it leaves a lot of questions in its wake.

Englar has created a dystopian world dominated by a dull, gray, heavy, and lethargic power. Communication has broken down, very little of what is said is of interest, and any level of clamor or liveliness is harshly struck down. It's scary.