Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

Couldn't resist. And now feel so grateful for this Mountain of Hilarious Madness that is Busser's THE COURTESY CALL OF C'THULHU. It's comedic genius to establish a recognizable pattern - how tech and social media-speak relates to the language of the eternal - to offer up the play's strategy and yet defy expectations so brilliantly.
The play really peaks at about two/thirds of the way in with the Cosmos/Cosmetics jokes and C'Thulu's sensitivity about their mother. Even if you're not well-versed in Lovecraftian horror, this amazing spoof will make your day.

The authenticity of Keagan's voice is pitch perfect, as he very movingly opens up to the theatre ghost in a way I sense he would be unable to speak with anyone else. There's a logic to his desperation, a soul unburdening itself to the otherworldly. Fine work that I imagine is very powerful in performance with its mostly dark stage drawing the audience to the light.

Ah, the repetitions, the banality, the emptiness! BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE IN A LIVING ROOM DOING NOTHING seems as if some yesteryear has crept into the present - through sheer apathy, through sheer want of a motive. Is Alec Seymour mocking Chekhov’s Three Sisters - as the references suggest? Or plays that come from character when the characters have nothing to offer? This is a fascinating satire that gives three actors so much to play with. Pass the rifle. You can almost feel the boredom in the room.

FUKT is true to itself, as wild as hell in its tripartite testimonial ferocity that feels as if it could erupt and hurl lava everywhere but Emma, Bobbie, and Barbara never lose command of their astonishing subject until at last we all arrive uplifted from the abyss. I love the Jung epigraph and think this play gets at the competing truths in one woman’s soul as Goldman-Sherman fearlessly probes the dark. So happy this vital work is being staged!!!

This play had me bursting out with laughter in the beginning and thinking more and more as it went. A satisfying new take on the Book of Job with a really cool ending!

I love how what's to be feared, the boogie man, moves from Whitney ridding herself of the vague imaginary intruder as a kid, to the horror movie screen on a date with her leaning in on Matt during the scary parts, to her eerie description of a sleepless night in her apartment, finally to the immediate threat in the car. BOOGIE MAN creeps up on you in the best possible way!

Word gets out fast and as a kid I shied away from the milk-bottle game at the county fair. This fine very short play demonstrates how even losing isn't always a sure bet. KNOCK OVER THE MILK BOTTLES - WIN A PRIZE! reminds us what all of us big and little need to remember - that anything can happen.

Phenomenal humor and a gripping narrative told with many voices! This hilarious bedtime story is a giddy potpourri of pop references, but it's the underlying earnestness and immediacy of the tale - Wow, which might be the receiver's origin story - that gives ORAL HERSTORY its perfect balance. Dexter makes high demands to his mother Kali for a high-def incredible big-picture worth-revisiting bedtime story and gets more than he bargained for. An intense dose of the world we enter into as a mere babe. Can't say enough good things about this terrific play!!

It's so unexpected in this terrific two-hander (with only one actor on stage) that Jim and the Caller work each other up, antagonistically, to such a positive effect. Don't try this at home. This kind of jousting between fragile beings might prove disastrous in less capable hands than Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos who brings SUICIDE HOTLINE to its fitting applecart-upsetting conclusion. Fine, fine work!

THE GIRL IN THE WALL might be the strangest, most chilling monologue I will ever dote on. It is so cunningly crafted that every word feels like it belongs, within its Appalachian voice, yet - Damn - following the story is like peeling a metaphysical onion of willed deaths and killing by drunken proxy, ghosts, doomed lives that won't quit, a spirit turning out to be something more horrifying. All in just a few pages. What a blast and a miracle this play would be to see performed!