Recommended by Jo Brisbane

What a fun romp! Rachel Feeny-Williams' short play trots right along as jealous Twinkle devises plots to rid his home of Jenny's human boyfriend. Twinkle deserves some kind of award as one of the most sardonic-voiced canines to ever trod the boards. If you stage "Good Boy?", someone gets to play a great role as an over-sized dog in an oversized doggie basket bed. Still trying to picture the right breed -- Pug? Corgi? Bassett Hound?

Writer Everett Robert has created a deeply impressive account of how real-life wrestler Roscoe "Sputnik" Monroe directly shifted Memphis, Tennessee from public segregation toward integration in the early 1960s. "Sputnik" is a forceful short play, an ideal vehicle for an outsized actor and any director with a cinematic eye. Everett Robert has written a densely-packed play with great skill. "Sputnik" races through space and time to an exciting ending, where justice is beginning to prevail.

"Modern Miracle" will make you smile, as it riffs on biblical themes and places Jesus and the twelve disciples center stage. From the miracle of the loaves and fishes, to a reversal of turning water into wine, writer Steven G. Martin uses sly humor to comment on faithless humanity.

Deftly written and scorchingly funny, "The Morning After" will entertain any fan of the great American playwright whose name I dare not speak in this recommendation. Paul Donnelly's entirely outrageous premise succeeds on many levels. I would love to direct this play, be in this play, experience this play. I could almost smell the scotch from the splintered glass -- the remains of the night before.

Thank you, Marj O'Neill-Butler, for this delightfully wicked take on the holidays! "Looking for Seasonal Work" is a darkly funny and all-too familiar tale of sexism in the workplace. The twist here, is that sweet Mrs. Claus cannot wait to get her claws on innocent young Joshua. For mature audiences that relish a good satire.

"Spider Girl", like its subject matter (the tarantula), is horribly fascinating and yet beautifully fragile. This very short play is both a one-person defense of the tarantula and a daring first-date revelation by its main character. As a very long monologue it has real depth, questioning the craigslist trafficking of these reclusive and largely harmless creatures.

Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn explores the judgement before the final judgement in this dark comedy set at heaven's gate. "Squisher's Atonement" is a deft and funny exploration of our revulsion toward insects, coupled with our guilt at destroying them out of fear. Floyd-Priskorn writes witty dialogue that plays with ideas of both sin and self-defense.

Prepare yourself for a fascinating B-movie sort of immersion in Collin Van Son's thriller "Praey for the Mantis". Van Son stitches together the mysteries of nature with a (nearly forgotten) sci-fi movie script, and manages to incorporate silkworms, silkmoths, preying/praying mantises, and seventeen-year cicadas within this well-spun tale.

Joanna Castle Miller writes chillingly about a battle of will and intellect and sets her play within a funky Brooklyn apartment. An apartment funky with bedbugs, yes bedbugs. She sets us to squirming and laughing all at once as hipster Frank meets his evolutionary superior, the fecund bedbug named Jim. Outrageously imaginative, this "Parasite" will reduce you to a helpless and itching mammal.

Eric Pfeffinger masterfully marries deadpan dialogue to the freakish results of industrial accidents. Set in a tax preparer's office, this dark satire erupts into an epic battle between two newly manufactured monsters, monsters born of corporate neglect. "Melto Man and Lady Mantis" are every costumer's and actor's dream roles (or the stuff of their nightmares). Or both.