Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times - Christmas, that is. DRUNK CHRISTMAS establishes with a raucous joke on the first page that this is the anti-Currier and Ives Christmas play and playwright McLindon keeps his dark promise to the end. I saw this play as a part of a Zoom Christmas festival, and found it to be courageous in its exploration of just how unhappy a time the holiday season can be. The alcoholic and the goth girl receive the great gift of themselves, safe and asleep and just perhaps better for it.

What makes IN DREAMS such a fascinating, magical domestic play is that it is so intimate and elusive at the same time. There is a fishbowl familiarity to Mom and Dad's repartee, Mom's eyeing the audience as she's also taking in Dad, a vastness to what the dialogue suggests about their marriage and marriage in general as all the borders come down. I love Dad's line: "But she doesn't ever quite look at me -- I mean, she does, but it's -- " And Mom's reply, "It's fine." Life is long, but this play is beautiful and brief. And wonderful!

What an exciting short play! So much to praise, such small space - but what separates OFF CENTER from other fine twisty work is Floyd-Priskorn's masterful - even Chekhovian - creation of temporal depth. We are informed it's 7 minutes before the museum closes, of Lindsay's newness on the job and later that he's come out of archive duty, that the other security guard Marco will be right back, and then there's urgency from Melody: "Quit farting around and make your damn art, before it's too late." You'll be thrown perfectly off center! This one is a new favorite!!

Deeply sorrowful is CHILDISH THINGS. A sort of toy gallows humor augments the complex absurdist mood. I admire the repetition of the dinosaur jokes that Teddy makes, how they gauge the growing desperation of Jerry as he tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter Rachel to give her some very bad news. The theme of trying to fix an adult catastrophe with toy surrogates is an important one as we become more and more accustomed to virtual realities and AI companions that Teddy and Bunny foreshadow. Arthur Jolly is a major talent.

My first gander at a tragic play by John Busser and this one's gut-wrenching and vital. The voice of Gary, the driver's ed. teacher is spot-on and hypnotic as it pulls you in with a menacing driver's ed build-up. Love how the parallel danger of teen-agers learning to handle a 2-ton vehicle and gun violence gradually intersect. A favorite line of Gary's, among many: "Things are always in your way." A staging of OBSTACLE, I'm sure, would offer the opportunity for a meaningful talkback and maybe we could get somewhere with what to do about gun violence in schools.

Great title, premise, and follow-through - ADMISSION IMPOSSIBLE makes you think as you laugh. This is the kind of satire that rings true enough to really give us pause and wonder about what kind of society we will having going forward. Love Tom Moran's comedic timing and the plot-twists in the road that bring this fine play home to its sardonic conclusion.

Is the titular feline a psychic or a killer? Only KEVORKIAN'S CAT knows. I love the rich humor that comes from the sadness. And that Cat is the agency for understanding and acceptance between Professor Oliver and Vicky. In just a few pages Maggie Gallant renders a complex situation very powerfully.

Spiritual, moving, measured, pensive, insightful, quietly dramatic, evocative - EMILY DICKINSON TALKS TO GOD, NOW is a monologue in the voice of Fredericka Barnes, a neighbor of the reclusive poet. What I most admire about this piece is how much it allows you the imagery of the silent rapport between the monologuist and her subject, and hence through our imagination - as led by Fredericka's words - Emily comes back to life.

This WWII memory play seems very apt, in the context of a new major war. Plumridge subtly contrasts military flying machines and hierarchies with the beauty of nature and her winged creatures. Without pedantics or exposition, war comes across as something uniquely stupid to humankind as we increasingly stray from the natural world. Well done!

Remarkable how alive these two characters become through Plumridge's minimalist use of language (that recalls the work of David Harrower). The tension is high, as someone is being preyed upon, but the fun is not knowing whom - as the patient seems to wrestle control away from the psychologist, or does she? I love how much opportunity this short play allows two actors to interpret their roles and exactly what happens in the final pages.