Recommended by Robert Weibezahl

A wholly original, beautifully written play about bereavement and letting go. The orderliness of science and math—“the perfectly observable and certain”—may ballast us in life, but perhaps are not enough when we contemplate what cannot be seen or known. Martin’s play leaves us searching for a code to communicate what we are feeling when words fail us.

The title says it all. Martin’s masterful short play, crafted out of variations on a single word, addresses how we are uncomfortable in both our humanity and inhumanity. A powerful piece that a skilled actor could bring to uncompromising life.

Busser’s hilarious take on an actress’s virtual visit with her gynecologist contorts his characters, both literally and emotionally. Always a master of witty wordplay, Busser manages to portray the way we are forced to live now with lighthearted charm as he achieves what for many might seem impossible – a physical farce in a videoconferencing format. This one begs to be seen.

If Noël Coward and Robert Harling had collaborated, they might have come up with something akin to this sharp-tongued one-act comedy. Sansone-Braff lovingly skewers New Age fads, and her beautifully-delineated quartet of characters put the “altogether ooky” into kooky.

Survivor’s guilt, pain, fear, PSD … these deeply affecting vestiges of trauma play out with remarkable clarity in this hard to forget monologue.

The fundamental things apply at all those dreaded post-play talk backs writers are subjected to: pretentious respondents who like to hear themselves blather on, those who want to rewrite your play while adamantly insisting they don’t want to rewrite your play and, of course, the tongue-tied, long suffering playwright whose feeble responses are roundly ignored. Williams cooks all this wicked depravity into a hilarious satire that will have you laughing even as you cringe with been-there-done-that resignation.

This short, poignant memory play could not be more timely, as so many of us look back on past behavior – both our actions and inaction – and contemplate how culpable we may have been in fostering systemic inequalities. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, retired professor Peter now lives in a lingering purgatory. FAILING EPHRAIM COLTON is provocative in the true sense: provoking us to look into our own hearts to ferret out and confront repressed truths.

The anguish is as palpable as the bitter cold in this brutally honest monologue. As the harsh reality of this adjunct professor’s pitiful reality dawns, Wyndham offers a biting indictment of our higher education system and what we value and fail to value in our society.

In this enchanting brief encounter, Bartleby, who shares his name with literature’s most reluctant enigma, is the perfect embodiment of relationship fear and anxiety – until he discovers that connection can be found in the simple as well as the profound.

Carnes’s grace-filled play reminds that each of us is a through-line between past and future and that hope exists not only within ourselves. Funny, provoking, affecting — a perfect little play for our times.