Recommended by Robert Weibezahl

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.

On its surface, STICKS AND STONES is a trenchant play about bullying on numerous levels, but Dan Taube also tackles the complicated dynamics of our flawed educational system and, even, some basic truths about how we treat each other in our at-once over-sensitive and desensitized age. This is both a timely and timeless play.

Taube sensitively tackles one of the most contentious issues of our time and gets to the heart of the matter with this beautifully written “chamber piece” that will reverberate in the consciousness of any thoughtful reader/viewer long after the last “thoughts and prayers” is uttered.

A beautiful slice of humanity and urban life. Rice creates two vibrant and very real characters in Lillian and Charlie, characters you know if you’ve ever walked the streets of New York or any big city. There is so much to read between the lines here, two whole lives played out in ten fast-moving minutes. The ending, tender and hopeful, is truly, in Lillian’s own words, “gold.”

Nothing is as it initially appears in this scathing and disturbing satire. Like all good satire, HOW ABOUT THEM DODGERS hones very, very close to the reality it skewers and will make any right-minded citizen (as opposed to Right-minded Fascist) squirm with discomfort between the laughs. Williams, acclaimed for his tender and insightful character-driven plays, dexterously stakes out new territory here. How soon can we schedule a reading on the steps of the Capitol in Tallahassee?

A charming monologue that beautifully captures how the quirky things that may have embarrassed us about our parents when we were children become the very things we deeply cherish in our memories. So evocative … You can almost hear the tinny dance music emanating from the kitchen radio.

Brenton Kniess plays clever tricks on his audience with this startling short play. What begins as a benignly gentle romantic dialogue takes a macabre twist you won’t see coming. One scoop or two? A perfect addition to any festival of horror shorts.

In just three minutes or so, Alice Josephs gives us a fully-realized world of theatrical action and tension, unexpected twists, emotional complexity, and compassion. This short piece is a masterful tour de force.