Recommended by Ian Thal

A myth about the invention of the kiss by our early human ancestors. It is about those most visceral of human needs, and the most visceral ways of fulfilling them: hunger, sex, aggression, violence, bloodshed, sharing, tenderness. There are so many possibilities for staging: Physical theater styles as clowning or mime, puppetry, a cantastoria with narration, even animation, that a festival of disparate stagings is imaginable.

Having busked as a mime, I can say that Hansen well-captures that absurd desperation that sets in with the uncertainty of whether the audience has the understanding or attention-span for one's chosen art form -- made even more extreme when the audience has disappeared from the venues (in this case, public spaces like the street). The stage directions show an appreciation for the mime idiom and leave room for a skilled performer's own inventiveness.

Great potential for inventive physical theater or puppetry -- exemplified by the line, "the rest of you that isn’t a hand doesn’t look like a hand" -- but it would be spoilers to say who says it!

In Timbuktu, B.E. Turner's language, imagery, and sequences of action are wonderfully playful and draw our attention to the usually unexamined conventions of dining in a restaurant and of going to the theater. By breaking so many of the rules and rituals we take for granted we see just how arbitrary they really are. It's hilarious!

Hell is a bureaucracy with corrupt managers, long lines, and under-appreciated clerical staff.

Wonderfully surreal comedy featuring anthropomorphic snakes, rendering their reptilian psychology and physiology into dialogue and stage directions. The fun comes from finding the metaphors for the human experience.

The absurd is political in this satire on misogyny. Despite serious subject matter, Susan Hansell playfully uses physical theater, onomatopoeia, and visual puns to cleverly get her points across while prompting some uncomfortable laughs.

A dark feminist-existential comedy about authoritarianism, and the commodification of sex, and lallygagging as resistance. De Savigné has a fiercely ribald wit and knows how to read a map!

A rare ten-minute satire about the modern workplace that manages to be zany, erudite, and philosophical. Hughes has crafted characters who are simultaneously ridiculous yet complex and deep. The play also has a strong sense of place with references to Massachusetts geography and culture.

Both philosophy majors and those who were confounded by their existence will recognize the aporia of this absurdist three-hander.