Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

RETURN TO MOTHER’S NEST is eerie, mysterious, and trenchant. I read it once, mulled it over and read it a second time, and I’m still letting its words creep around in my mind. If you love plays that explore Mother’s dark side (and I do) this is the short play for you. I admire the tug-of-war between familiar mother-daughter talk and something truly bizarre going on. Fine work that would be so much fun to see staged.

Infinity in a nutshell. My second encounter with Hannah Lee DeFrates’s work and I love THE LAST SPIN CYCLE for the dark place it takes up in the imagination, the seemingly effortless wit of characters (terrific names! by the way) that will resonate in the minds of strangers, the coolly desperate minimalistic props, a frigging arc handled so gracefully you don’t see it coming, and singing at the laundry as I’d never would’ve thunk it. Three cheers! A kind of magician's trick that leaves you wanting more.

Feeling at the end of your rope? This funny monologue I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE, BABY is just the thing you need. I love how Kevin King sets this up with the collective audience sitting in as the customer - so we get taken in as we’re being taken - and then this only makes the ending more satisfying when it happens. The tea-time digressions are fabulous!

Strangely perhaps, but I always kind of dug the Big Bad Wolf, and Marcia Eppich-Harris has penned a delightful exploration of his softer side. The humor is great from the description of Queenie as Big Bad’s wife, to the Orwellian twist with the Three Little Pigs and final reconciliation between Big Bad and Queenie. I can totally see a whole audience raised on fairy tales howling at CONFESSIONS OF THE BIG BAD WOLF.

In its 10 pages, SPACE LASER, IN SPACE! has it all. A sci-fi premise - Talia and David in a space ship, a debate about Jewish faith and assimilation, humorous commiseration about the neediness of mature moms, cool Yiddish words you may not have known before, and mounting tension about ethics and power. And it all fits perfectly. I really admire the depth and range that Jillian Blevins shows when she takes on a subject. This is a terrific, very timely short play that makes me want to hear much more from this exciting playwright.

This is a riveting and vibrant monologue from a day gone by - that wets your appetite for the longer work that it's drawn from. The speaker Bobby Broadway makes DISCOVERING MICKEY ROONEY come alive in your imagination. It brings a smile to see the beginnings of this tenacious and unstoppable performer and give hope for what was meant to be. FIne work!

I love the openness and lifelike quality of this Paul Smith short like a painting that only asks to be itself - two older women in a coffee shop - at the very outset of something, an acquaintanceship - sipping their coffee. I'm thinking LAWRENCE'S ARABICA would be really cool to see staged 4 times - as the beginnings of 4 different stories each with a different mood, each with different motives for the actors.

Probably we’ve all been there - in the Visitor of ZOO LOO’s shoes. Enough to feel the pain and laugh at the protracted directions. The names of the various animal habitats are a delight and the numbness of the Guide to the Visitor’s plight is hilarious.

With TELL ME WHO I WAS, Caitlin Strom-Martin unveils a powerful and complex scene in a care facility where Liz struggles with her mother Caroline’s dementia and her teenage daughter Carrie’s freaking out at the hard reality of the elderly waiting to die. The interplay between the three generations is insightful and poignant. I love in particular Caroline believing that she’s waiting for a train and her fixation with her passport (or her identity, as her consciousness seems to float away, giving me memories of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker). Very lovely, necessary work.

In Art there are no rules. Wait, is that a rule? Maybe, but it’s not THE MAMET RULE. Worthy of every delirious rec it’s gotten and will get. Richter has done it, a playwright-liberating - it feels like a jailbreak - perfectly crafted one-minute play! Love this!!