NPX Weekly Round-Up: My Top 5 NPX Plays of 2024

An end-of-year ranking of some of my favorite plays off NPX that I've read this year, plus some reading goals for 2025.

It’s hard to believe that this SubStack is almost exactly a year old today. The life I had 12 months ago is NOT the life I live now, both for better and worse, and I’m constantly amazed by how much things can change in such a short amount of time. This year I moved to a new state, got a divorce, got laid off, started working in a public school for the first time, started dating women (finally)…it’s been insane. And among those insane things was hitting 100 subscribers here on SubStack! I’m amazed that there are over 100 people out there who want to read what I have to say on plays, playwriting, and theatre. So, thank you.

While reflecting on my year as a playwright, I thought about the many MANY plays I’ve read this year. Which ones taught me the most? Which ones inspired me, influenced me, stuck with me? What kinds of things do I want to read more of in 2025?

So, I decided to do a couple of things: one, make a list of my top five favorite NPX plays, and two, make reading goals for next year.

Without further ado, let’s round it up!!!

Top Five NPX Plays of 2024

#5: What’s In The Basement, Honey? by Bethany Dickens Asaaf

Something about this play just really stuck with me. Perhaps it was the use of an unseen, unknown monster as a metaphor for resentment and problems in a relationship. Perhaps it was the achingly realistic relationship between the main couple. Or, even still, perhaps it was that I read it at a time when I was still heavily processing the end of a marriage (whoops).

But no matter the reason, this is a play that I absolutely did not forget the plot of when I saw the title a few months on. It may be short, but the amount of meaning it managed to convey in those few pages was astounding. This work showed me that a short play can have just as much power as a full length work.

#4: Dirty Laundry by Matilda Dratwa

This play was recommended to me by my best friend after she got her first year of NPX (yay!). The format and structure of the piece is what I recall most approximately two and a half months later. It just fit the message of the piece, and its characters, so well. How the work was organized added to not only my enjoyment, but my understanding.

I also loved the use of the Greek chorus in this one, and it made me want to try and utilize it as a tool in my own work. I think sometimes we don’t think of something like a Greek chorus as having a place in modern day playwriting, but I believe most things are worth trying at least once. Dratwa used so many tools in her toolbelt with purpose and wisdom in this script, and I feel like it gave me a standard to strive for.

#3: Fertile Ground by Jennifer O’Grady / Kairos by Lisa Sanaye Dring

For some reason, though these plays are about different things, they have such a similar vibe and atmosphere. So much so that I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to include in this list! I wanted to include both without edging out another favorite, so here they are together.

I surmise that these plays, while different, stick together in my brain because they both talk about the very messy, very dark side of relationships of all kinds. Fertile Ground talks a lot about familial relationships and a bit about romance, while Kairos sort of does the opposite (mostly about romance, but touches on familial). Both are extremely character driven pieces that I recommend reading if you want to study up on, well, character. While the people that populate Fertile Ground are unlikable as hell and the ones that occupy Kairos are lovable and sympathetic, both manage to create dynamic relationships that draw the reader/watcher in. Definitely something I want to continue learning to do!

#2: PSYCHOPSYCHOTIC or everyone at yale is a sociopath !!! by Alexa Derman

Maybe it’s because I’m a true crime girlie, but I could never forget this piece by Alexa Derman. Honestly, I think I also just related to the piece artistically, as I am wont to use violence as allegory as well. Derman uses a man slowly eating parts of a woman he has kidnapped and put in his closet as a metaphor for how the patriarchy slowly eats at and destroys women and femmes…and it’s amazing.

This piece also touches on something that is incredibly important, especially nowadays: sexual assault. It was a huge problem on my college campus as an undergrad, and it continues to be a problem for undergraduates today. It’s disgusting, and I like that this piece holds a mirror up to the problem and forces the audience to look at it, gore and all. I think it can be hard to really just release all of that in a script, but I think it’s easier to tone something down than punch it up, so I aim to go big like Derman does in this piece.

#1: INFERNA by Joanna Castle Miller

Finally, we come to perhaps my favorite of the year. It was really hard to put these in order, and I chose this piece by Joanna Castle Miller mostly because it was the piece that inspired me the most this year. The biggest piece I wrote/worked on this year was my new solo show, A Bisexual 20-Something’s Guide to Divorce, and a lot of what I read in this piece gave me encouragement to write.

Honestly, I just love the candor with which Miller speaks in this piece. She lays everything bare for the audience, and in doing so is able to clearly and effectively impart her message. It also makes the character of her in the play very likable and sympathetic, even when she is confessing to things she is not proud of. I hope to have the courage to convey such honesty in my own work.

2025 Reading Goals

#1: Read more plays by people of color.

As a white person, I think it behooves me to read scripts by people who are different from me, and support the work of marginalized artists. I want to do more of that in 2025!

#2: Read more experimental scripts.

I’m technically an experimentalist myself, and I would love to learn more from other experimental playwrights about form and structure specifically. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a weird form and structure nerd!

#3: Read more plays in underserved genres.

I think I do a good bit of this already, but I want to read more plays in genres that we don’t see a lot, such as fantasy, sci-fi, and speculative theater. I love seeing how the playwright fits these genres we usually see more in film and novels onto the stage! I find it very inspiring.

Well, that’s it for this year folks. I’ve learned so so much this year from writing this SubStack; working with talented artists through First Kiss Theatre, MoB Theatre, and Dramatic Question Theatre; and going to see shows put on by friends and strangers alike. I feel like each year I grow a little bit more, discover myself just a tad more, as an artist.

I have goals for next year, for sure. This year I won one small contest; got commissioned for a play (gets a reading in March 2025!); was a finalist for a medium sized festival; and got accepted into the American Woman Fellowship at DQT. Next year I will not be going through multiple huge life changes all at once, so I will hopefully be able to submit more work, or even self produce. We’ll see— all I know is that I’ll be doing cool shit no matter what.

Happy Holidays everyone, and see you on January 6th for the first post of 2025!

~Brynn