Recommended by Rachael Carnes

This play is just beautiful. In just a few pages, Hilton builds a world, offering up a whole new *idea* that I'll be flipping over in my brain for a long time to come, and he caches this gorgeous new concept in warm, elegant, spare dialogue between two immediately and imminently lovely characters. This piece elevates the mundane, a dishtowel, an iced tea, the light across the field, to the sacred. Damn! I'm not surprised to see it's been produced in a competitive festival. But it should be produced MORE. This play is a gem.

I am so glad that I took the trip magic carpet ride that is this 10-minute play! Delightfully pithy, a kind of Waiting for Godot meets Plan Nine from Outer Space. What an effervescent splendor this would be onstage! Adams brings us theatricality, spectacle, and real feeling. The kind of feeling that only country music and the love of an evil fish woman can make you feel! Comedy writing is hard to get right. And dang it, this one's just a pip. Two thumbs up!

This play. This writer. I don't even know what to say, it's just such a tour de force. I hear echoes of Kushner and Ruhl, in the confident slips and slides between realities, the way Diaz-Marcano takes us by the hand and says, "Jump with me? Okay?" and we go. His work has big, bold vision, like a 2019 José Rivera, or José Cruz González. But if this play demonstrates anything, it's the singularity of Nelson's voice. His play world is completely built, structured and accessible, yet like the masters, Nelson's work always anchors itself in our imagination and empathy.

Medea is between a rock and a hard place. She doesn't fit in, and she can't really leave. So, what now? Triplett takes an ancient story, and plumbs it for relevancy to our contemporary world. Lots of incongruities and hypocrisies surface as weather-beaten warriors and coddled teens clack jaws, and Medea seeks solace and revenge. When my ears opened up to the rich language world, the contemporary nature of the story infilled for me, and I took the rest of the play in one gulp, imagining the staging possibilities, and rooting for Medea all the way.

Spot-on send up of technology's sometimes corrosive influence, on what we think, feel, how we react. Richter's clever fairytale frame gives us this perfect world to unravel, with Rapunzel and her mom spoiling for a good mother-daughter fight, on or offline.

This is just gorgeous. In ten short minutes, Krantz develops two multi-dimensional characters — Both children. So often onstage, kids are window dressing, or comic relief. Maybe they get to throw a tantrum. But not these kids. Krantz paints a portrait where the foibles of adult life are held up in the hearts and minds of two adorable second graders. Oh, how I would love to see this performed!

The elusive call for Staten Island Ferry plays is definitively answered in Fix Curry's charming, fun and engaging (literally, it breaks the fourth wall and asks the audience to vote on an ending) play. The way she plays with fate, with the little choices, and how they add up to Big Things, is so relevant for a play set on this rolling stage between these two boroughs. I took the Staten Island ferry every weekday for five years, and I can see this scene play out so clearly. I'm sure that the play would be an immediate hit with audiences.

What a refreshingly breezy read! Fun and confident, light-hearted and spacious and featuring something we don't see enough of: Excellent roles for teen girls! It is not surprising that this delightful play is among the most-recommended short plays on NPX. It would be such fun to produce, and is engaging, and appropriate, for younger performers. Perfect for a short play festival, or a drama class showcase.

Okay. Are you reading and producing Nelson's work? Hello? Is this thing on? Can you hear me? This play is a prime example of why Diaz-Marcano has such a brilliant voice in contemporary theatre: This play is warm, funny, accessible — Cool, and hip and irreverent — This play is dead sexy, and sacred, all in one. Read it, put it on the stage. Please. This is why theatre exists.

"What have you done to our home?" — Yes, this question reverberates across American history, and echoes in the recesses of this compelling one-act, set in a pivotal transition, a shifting balance of power and threading of geography and cultures, in the Great Plains. Robert creates a terrific sense of locality, a dusty, windy enterprise, populated with miscreants and heroes, kind of like where you live. In this short piece, the writer shows us that the age-old tug between what's right, and what's profitable.