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Daniel Prillaman

Recommended by Daniel Prillaman

  • One More Hot Garbage Sunrise by Aly Kantor
    1 Oct. 2023
    “ When you disregard the occasional difference in that one is sometimes more by choice than the other, is there really a difference between leaving and dying? The distance between Earth and any afterlife is probably about the same as Earth and Venus...

    Kantor always knocks it out of the park with fully realized voices and pitch-perfect world-building. This one-act is no different. Here, a likely final meeting between two sisters turns tragically short when an itinerary demands it's time to go. It's brutal. At least the sunrise is pretty. ”
  • dad shot himself and left behind a box of kink porn by Haygen-Brice Walker
    1 Oct. 2023
    “ Walker’s grim circumstances of (unarticulated?) grief give way to a couple’s dark exploration of sexual desire. This is a raw fucking short, riddled with disturbing fantasies, the ethics of watching porn, and the very worst of patriarchal attraction. For those who can stomach the ride, it’s a fearless play that plumbs the depths of human connection and expression. Are Dana and Rob just trying to feel something, anything? What are they really thinking? What we are? And is it any more than the secrets we leave behind? A haunting, enthralling final image. ”
  • The Resurrectionists by Robert J. LeBlanc
    30 Sep. 2023
    “ Hilarious. I’m hard-pressed to think of something more fun. LeBlanc has crafted a duo that feels simultaneously plucked from Shakespeare and Python in equal measure. This is top-tier banter. Their logic, actually, is irrefutable, and this is a piece that would…*ahem* kill at any short festival, no matter its focus. ”
  • Bonefruit by Leah Plante-Wiener
    28 Sep. 2023
    “ At once relentlessly tragic and desperately hopeful, BONEFRUIT is a staggering short play. Evocative of the oldest folk tales and legend, Plante-Wiener constructs her setting with a microscopic focus on the relationship betwixt Lark and Anhedonia. It’s the best kind of world-building, spoon-feeding us nothing, but allowing us to discern the rules and meanings of everything at our own pace. A beautiful mediation on connection, family, love, and survival. ”
  • The Cold Hit by Greg Mandryk
    25 Sep. 2023
    “ A jovial twist on two mafia grunts filming a hit for the boss, there’s not much I can say about Mandryk’s short piece that won’t give away the fun. What I can get away with is that we all know the turn is coming, just not exactly how and when. How and when is absolutely pitch-perfect, grimly terrifying, unearthly amusing, and just so so good. A great little horror for any spooky festival. ”
  • The Rainmaker by Dante Piro
    24 Sep. 2023
    “ I cannot recommend a play more. I mean it. Drop what you are doing and read this now. Insidiously hysterical, fantastically theatrical, this play is a goddamned delight. It is the kind that every actor, director, and designer salivates over. It pulsates with a wry, stupid humor that provides beat after beat of the most infectious imagery and sequences I’ve ever seen. I want to be in this. I want to see this. And if it takes multiple curses with excessive, long-reaching, and unfortunate effects to make that happen, so be it. ”
  • The Eighteenth Quinquennial Endlings Picnic by Jillian Blevins
    22 Sep. 2023
    “ Despite the connection offered us by social media, we are perhaps ironically closer to the titular endlings more than we know. We’re not the last of our species, but we are just as distraught, stressed, hopeless, and lonely when we face the state of the world. And, of course, another big difference is that we’re the ones who caused it. A powerful condemnation of humanity’s carelessness with the planet, as well as a fine meditation on ending, and knowing your time is limited. It means those you share it with mean everything. ”
  • TUB WARZ by Elise Wien
    22 Sep. 2023
    “ We all watch TUB WARZ for the same reasons we want to be on TUB WARZ. Punishment, vindication, to feel feelings, tbh it really shouldn’t matter, should it?

    Wien’s tight ten minute is a surreal descent into the murkiest depths of humanity and what we are capable of inflicting upon one another. It’s not pretty. It’s scary, actually. But at least it pays the bills? Maybe? Click that like button and subscribe, y’all. ”
  • Piss Cup Payments by Brandon Urrutia
    22 Sep. 2023
    “ I write a lot of pee jokes. Like, far too many of my plays have piss in them. It's not a sexual thing. Piss is funny. Some people like poop humor. My fiancée loves it when characters suddenly vomit. We all have our favorite bodily functions.

    I have to say these things to avoid giving anything away about Urrutia's play. I want so much to talk about it, but I cannot spoil what is irrevocably the greatest play with piss in it I have ever encountered. I wish I had written it. Unrelatedly, I have to go the bathroom. ”
  • Erosion by Erin Proctor
    22 Sep. 2023
    “ On the surface, Proctor’s ten minute is a sketch (and a fucking hilarious one at that). But shave some layers of rock down and we can discern another level of musing, “with enough time, everything fades.” Are the gods and worries and concerns of today going to exist hundreds of years from now? Thousands? Decades? A fun, irreverent reminder to make the most of the time we have, and that thankfully, we are all at least better off than Sisyphus. ”

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