Recommended by Robert Weibezahl

With her usual dexterity, O’Neill-Butler beautiful navigates the tricky tightrope between comedy and tragedy as two lonely, elderly schlubs scheme to get their kids and grandkids to pay attention to them. Think Chandler and Joey fifty years on, with the same sense of doomed high jinks wrapped in heartfelt silliness. Perfect for actors of “a certain age” to explore a range of emotions.

A skink teaching a polar bear to surf. How’s that for a one-in-a-million prompt? This charming play for all ages is funny, touching, and clever all at once. It’s portrait of a friendship’s growth is spot on and its message about the need for adaptability timeless. The wordplay is delicious. BLIZZARD IN HAWII is perfect for either a (grownup) Holiday short play festival or for school or youth theater groups. It’s chill.

This is a perfect monologue that encapsulates so much about a life in just two minutes. Miller tells a charming story infused with humor, whimsy, and a touch of nostalgia. I should think every actress of the appropriate age would jump at the chance to embody Noreen.

As Plumridge‘s slow-burning metaphor of an uninvited guest builds, our suspense turns to heart-wrenching empathy as we come to realize what the speaker is eluding to about their life and revealing about themselves. An honest, brave, and wholly dramatic monologue that many actors will attack with ferocity of heart.

This absurdist short play cleverly taps the talented Larry Rinkel’s known love and knowledge of classical music. Music (well, all art) is not a product and the instruments that produce it not merely tools. As Jake comes to learn these truths – from the ghost of Vladimir Horowitz and a talking piano no less! – we laugh and learn along with him. This is a perfect comedy for any ten-minute festival that wants to push the limits and have some fun.

A clever and suspenseful ouroboros that explores grief, culpability, and the space-time continuum – all in ten fast-paced pages! Kniess keeps us guessing up to the moment when he pierces our hearts, as we realize Nick’s painful, inexorable fate. A very thought-provoking short play.

This shorter version of Arianna Rose’s popular one-act has all the splash, kick, and grace of the original. What would we tell our younger selves? And what could our younger selves teach us? Short play festivals, dip your toe into this comic and poignant dating pool. On second thought, dive right in. The water is fine!

Coco Chanel famously said “Scheherezade is easy; a little black dress is hard.” But playwriting magician John Mabey makes the hard look effortless in his LITTLE BLACK DRESS. It is everything a great 10-minute play should be: inventive and intriguing, instructive yet never didactic, driven by characters both extraordinary and relatable, poignant throughout yet funny at times, too. Doug and Zoe’s moment of confrontation is specific, but through it Mabey captures universalities about the limits of relationships and the limitlessness of love with bull's-eye accuracy.

At once heartbreaking and hopeful, SHE WANTED ME is a deftly-wrought, sensitive monologue that paints an unforgettable portrait of a girl—one of far too many—whom society has forgotten. Corinne’s voice resonates long after her empowering final words.

Wise, wistful, and heartbreakingly profound, I AM HE is a haunting short play about parenthood, fears, and surviving the worst imaginable thing. With her clever borrowings from the Merlin legend, Cole proves the true wizard here, weaving magic as the story takes surprising turns more than once. Any festival looking for a serious, compelling, and ultimately optimistic work about navigating grief should snap up I AM HE.