LOS ANGELES: Rogue Machine Theatre has announced its 2017 season, featuring five plays that challenge both characters and audiences to look inward.

“It struck me that each of these plays examines a crisis of personal ethics,” said artistic director John Perrin Flynn in a statement. “Is compassion foolish?  Is winning the only measure of a life?  Can we no longer forgive? Are we justified in acting against our conscience for a better good?  How do we choose what our lives should be?”

The 2017 season will open at the MET Theatre on March 4 with the West Coast premiere of Still Life by Academy Award-winner Alexander Dinelaris. About a rising photographer, the play examines the causal links between life and death, ethics and success, and art and redemption. Michael Peretzian will direct.

It will be followed in late May with the Los Angeles premiere of Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs, a tale of exploding colonial tensions and the impossible moral choices of those who must reconcile personal happiness with idealism. Gregg Daniels will direct.

Next is the West Coast premiere of I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard by Halley Feiffer, about the eternal struggles between parents and children to find common ground in a world where success and greed are the cultural touch points.

In late September will be the American premiere of Daytona by Oliver Cotton, a love story about three people who find themselves in crisis when the long-buried past returns to disturb the fragile lives they have constructed. Elina DeSantos will direct.

Later in the fall will be the world premiere of Bled for the Household Truth by Ruth Fowler, about how difficult it has become for young Americans to trust in a cynical world that both forces and promotes “me first.” Cameron Watson will direct.

Founded in 2008, Rogue Machine Theatre produces new plays, primarily by Los Angeles-based playwrights, and aAmerican, West Coast, and regional premieres of contemporary theatrical works.