Recommended by Daniel Prillaman

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Powles takes what could be a trite scene of gangster money negotiation and gives it surprising, welcome depth. Not only is this short spectacularly fresh, it strikes in its own way at the classic heart of noir and mafia stories, the parts of the business we do for our loved ones' protection and benefit…versus the alluring promises of what money can bring. This would be so much fun, to both portray and see.

A CSJ play is pure surreal poetry. Every time, I know I’m in for a treat, and MOSQUITO COMMISSION provides with fun imagery and delightful language in spades. Dating is hard, love is harder, and maybe we’re actually monsters for the things we do to other humans. I mean, lobsters, sorry. Whoops.

Make no misassumptions, putting this play on its feet would be an undertaking, but god how powerful it would be! A full crowd, filled with people of all kinds, backgrounds, and morals, perhaps bigger than the audience itself? I can only imagine the stage imagery a team ready for the challenge would create. Weaver's dialogue is consistently powerful, but the true achievement here is the brilliance of having us watch the watchers, at once distancing the audience from the events, and pulling them ever closer. Man has done such grand and terrible things. This is one of them. Highly recommend.