Recommended by Donald E. Baker

Playwrights often experience characters rebelling during the writing of a play and insisting on going in directions the writer never intended. But when it happens during a performance, hilarious chaos ensues. It's Busser at his comedic best, and that is very good indeed. (P.S., if you ever have the opportunity to audition for this play, hope you're cast as The Others #3. Just saying.)

What is the threat? We don't know, and of course that makes it even worse. Radio drama plays on the imaginations of the listeners, and they would be working overtime responding along with the characters to whatever is about to consume them. Merely reading it is scary enough. The fear would be heightened exponentially when actually hearing the terrified voices in performance. A wonderful example of minimal prose producing maximal results.

Lettuce just say, if you carrot all about puns you’ll love the ones that turnip in this little playlet. What a great vehicle for teachers to introduce a class to the wonderful world of vegetables.

I don’t know when I’ve been more affected by a play. Ever. It is so powerful in its surface simplicity. Written in response to a specific tragedy, the shooting at Michigan State University, in the times we live in it is timeless. It can and should be produced anywhere anytime. It’ll break your heart.

One man's trash is another man's treasure. Unfortunately it also works the other way around, as Frank discovers watching strangers pick through his and his late wife's belongings during an estate sale prior to his achieving the "freedom" of assisted living. He is hating the experience, irritable with his daughter, grouchy with the looky-loos. But then an encounter with a newlywed searching for treasures to furnish her first house changes his entire outlook. Deb Cole has given us a sweet play about a rite of passage many of us are dreading.

A child discovering the truth about Santa is sometimes devastated. Not the young boy in this lovely little play. His reaction is gratitude toward the source of all the gifts from Santa he received in Christmases past. How he demonstrates it will tug at your heartstrings. Nicely done.

As a baseball fan, I'm always intrigued, and sometimes appalled, at the rule changes Major League Baseball proposes to make the no-longer National Pastime more interesting to today's short-attention-span viewers. The suggestions Baughfman makes here, involving land mines, hand grenades, and cougars, would make things more exciting for sure. The potential for physical comedy on the part of the baseball player demonstrating the new rules in pantomime is unlimited.

A marvelous twist on the human summoning a demon trope. What if a demon, make it two bickering demons, summons a human? Always leave your audience wanting more, and Baughfman definitely left me wanting to see just what havoc Larry is capable of. This was a great introduction to the work of an original, offbeat mind.

Cubist art looks at things every which way all at the same time but somehow it makes sense. Jones has achieved the same thing here. The play is both serious and funny--both at the same time--and the characters are delightfully quirky and memorable. Producers looking to include something deliciously different in their next festival of short plays should give this work serious consideration.

What a super introduction to Japanese folklore! With a bit of The Little Mermaid (in reverse) and a touch of Rip Van Winkle, kids are going to want to put this play on and there are parts enough for half a class of budding thespians. The amount of memorization for any one student is small enough to keep it fun. It would make a great addition to any teaching unit on international culture or any school international festival. A great job by our man in Japan!