Recommended by Daniel Prillaman

Don't have kids, y'all.

In actual seriousness, goddamn, this is a terrifying short play. Absolutely chilling. Blevins takes a baby monitor and a rooftop and drops us into a pure whirlpool of dread. And while both roles are amazing for actors to chew on, the real star and masterful craft of this play is the use of sound, expertly suggesting fear that our imaginations take and run with. Sometimes, it's scarier when you can't see it. Sometimes, it's scarier when it's in your head. Because what if it's not real? What if it's just you?

Or what if you're right?

A sweet and moving exploration of grief, loss, and moving forward when our loved ones can't. While they may be gone, their memories aren't, and neither is what they put into the world. A powerful monologue perfect for any short festival, especially right now.

What begins as a truly raucous amount of killer jokes about roadside remains slowly morphs into a grand meditation on life. The choices we make that we are proud of, and the ones we perhaps regret. A fun reminder that life only moves in one direction, but that doesn’t mean any opportunity is truly closed to us. After all, the road is always wide open...just remember to look both ways before you cross.

I’ll have to read this (though I'd settle in an instant for seeing it) several more times to fully glean its brilliance. But that’s okay. Perhaps the continuous visits are part of the point. Eternal reoccurrences, if you will. Hanging out in a world crafted by Charles Scott Jones is never a bad thing. Quite the opposite. Especially when it's Nietzsche’s complex, grandeured insanity. So many fun moments and images lie in wait for those brave enough to find their way into this heady playground. Time bends, plants muse, and the mysteries go on and on.

Do they really simulate lockdown drills like this now?!

The past years have been traumatic for everyone. But the kids are taking it in on another level. Blevins' dramatic, heart-wrenching series of scenes shows all too well what our youngest generations are going through and growing into, and it's not pretty. While a fringe of this country has warped access to weapons of mass destruction to mean personal liberty, this is the havoc wrought on our children. Utter, irrevocable terror. Day after day after day. I long for a day this isn't a badly necessary play.

This play is actually very sound advice...in case a giant eye appears in the sky. How would you react? Could you commit to your own life in the face of such circumstances, or be overwhelmed by a need to know? A need to be right? I appreciate the exploration not in support of behaving anti-intellectually, but rationally. Without assumptions. It's the same advice I give myself that I don't often follow, why worry about something before it's a problem?

Well, because it blinks, of course.

When the clock turned us into the new millennium, I was just young enough to not have to worry about it. The same cannot be said for Oty's fun cast, who must face not only the clock, but the hardest transition of all, graduating from high school. This is a nostalgic journey about coming of age, figuring out what you want from life, and the realization that some friends might not stay friends forever. Just like good gas station candy, it's bittersweet and full of verve.

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.

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.

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.