Recommended by John Minigan

This is a stunning, deeply resonant play. What begins as a charming grandfather-grandson play about a baseball tryout quickly becomes a powerful story of how love can help us manage grief and reconnect after loss. A gorgeous short play with outstanding roles for both performers.

This play has so much to say about parenting, marriage, what we owe each other/our kids/our parents, and it says it unflinchingly--especially during a pandemic, but it's truths are about more than that. An outstanding short play that uses the zoom/virtual format brilliantly.

A corn dog (or is it Corn Dog) has an existential crisis. Hilarious, deep, and ultimately deep-fried.

And there's a stage direction about a stick that may rival "Exit, pursued by a bear."

This is a joy to read, and an actor would have a blast performing it!

If and when the world ends, it could never be as brilliant, hilarious, and biting as it is in this two-minute gem of a play. And it may find us doing what Stella does, fiddling (with our phones) while everything burns. In deft strokes, Steven G. Martin gives us in Stellan, Stella's sib, who in other circumstances and with a different café companion, might have a chance at awareness. We see in him a glimmer of hope too quickly extinguished by a hashtag and a dash of foam as much as by whatever falls from the skies. Outstanding work.

Maybe the only thing tougher than theater on zoom is getting sexy on zoom. This play does the "theater on zoom" thing brilliantly, bringing us up close to both characters and their combination of loneliness, hope, and awkwardness. Aptecker gives us a hilarious set-up and execution, and her characters highlight what isolation has done to us--and what isolation can sometimes push us to. Very funny, very human and, in the end, a little bit heartbreaking. You can't help but root for these characters, even while you understand that they can't get what they really want.

This ensemble play captures not just the history but the personal crises--ethical and emotional--of so many who lived through the era, weaving multiple threads in ways that bring what is for some an unknown past to life in compelling ways. The play resonates today, capturing the effect of national division on the individuals and on the country. Complex, engaging, and provocative work.

Emma Goldman-Sherman has crafted a brilliantly complex and resonant play about the dangerous normalization of all levels of patriarchal culture--from the centering of men in our politics and power to the sexual abuse of young girls. The play highlights one of the most painful aspects of the normalization: the way young girls internalize patterns of oppression and recapitulate them until tragedy forces confrontation and possible change. The play itself - through jumps in chronology, plasticity in roleplaying, juxtaposition of styles, and brilliant theatricality - does the same for the audience, making strange and therefore clear these patterns. Astonishing and heartbreaking.

This lovely and very funny play reminds us that sometimes it takes the unfamiliar to let us rediscover our true, joyful selves. The play gives us three crisply drawn characters and a central role whose change from closed and crotchety to open and accepting is completely earned in just a few pages. Laughter, compassion, and hope!

Mox Nox is a fascinating, resonant play, creating a world in which the characters (and audience) confront the consequences of our actions on personal and climate levels. The play also builds a world of isolation that feels particularly resonant. And it is brilliantly theatrical in its use of magic (yes, magic: levitation, disappearing bodies, sleight of hand with cards...) as a storytelling device, woven beautifully into the structure and never distracting from the human story at the play's core. Can't wait to see this one on stage,

Donna Hoke creates a piece that manages to blend the energies of farce, buddy flick, road flick, and quest narrative into a hugely entertaining and satisfying piece about women's friendship. Great roles for all three actors--two very specifically drawn women and a wild, multi-character, chameleon role for a third actor. Fun, funny, and fulfilling!