Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

I love kitchen plays for unfolding family secrets and this one doesn't disappoint. THE MADNESS OF MEMORY begins with lost car keys and opens up memories in this powerful short play by Vivian Lermond. Gina has a reckoning with her mother, Rosie, suffering from dementia who nonetheless manages an instance of chilling clarity. A favorite moment is when Gina chides her mother for not changing the calendar from June, even though its September, and Rosie's over-reaction, "I like June. I don't like you. You're a bad girl. I'm calling the police. They'll put you in prison." Ah, and then...

The ingenious setting/premise of PLAYING WITH DOLLS - in an alley behind a toy story - an interracial meeting between fathers exchanging dolls - is so ominous and curiosity-inducing. John Mabey has such a light and magical touch for difficult subjects. Even after a second reading, I'm agog at how he pulls off the art of making friends by two male parents. I love it that Carl appreciates Gregory for his honesty and gentle antagonism and Gregory tolerates Carl's clumsy attempts at openness. It's not easy for adult men to make friends and this wise play offers a pathway.

With SOMETHING BORROWED John Busser works his sibling-rivalry premise to its fullest extent with so much pain and humor. Borrowing as in thievery is a boundless source of mirth, as is coveting what isn't ours. I suspect most of us have been both sisters at some time in our lives (like Rachel, imagining something is ours until it is - like Sandra, yearning too much for what we won't get back.) I love the cascade of objects they carp about, the notebook, and the awesome non-verbal reveal that puts this short on a whole new and "deeper" plane. Terrific job.

In a diner two grown sons celebrate and remember their late mother's sense of humor in THE CAKE. When Alex was 10 and Charles 5, Mom tests the limits of the adage: You are what you eat. I admire how Jack Levine stays true to the heartwarming memory. There are family tensions and danger on the periphery - the brothers are after all from a family - but THE CAKE doesn't taste bitter. It is about the familial love we so often take for granted and encourages us all to hold onto what is dear to us about our mothers.

Okay. Here it is for the jaded been-there and done-that crowd who think there's nothing left to thrill them. Here it is at last that you find yourself within a play where and when anything and everything can happen. THE FURNITURE STORE is a premise play that sheds its premise and goes plot naked. Audience and stage direction become unwitting and unwilling characters once it's too late to hit the deck. The world of this Daniel Prillaman 10-min show spins so expertly out of control, it's liberating. For me expectations have never been more wonderfully not met.

I love THROWING ROCKS because as delusional as Molly is, her yearning for Jack's return is that aching emotion so many of us feel when we miss someone and imagine footsteps in the hallway or any of the trigger sounds that signal an approach. Rocks as the object is well-chosen because the time-honored strategy for a young suitor to get his lover's attention is to toss pebbles against the bedroom window, but marriage requires something larger and jagged, more painful. Debbie Lamedman's play is so sad and beautiful and it reminds me somehow of Beckett's Happy Days. Insightful work.

One of our jobs as playwrights is to create an atmosphere of curiosity that allows for well-timed backstory. Monica Cross pulls this off expertly - with a wonderful premise and a sci-fi noir buildup that makes welcome a mini history of the moons orbiting Mythos IV. The back and forth between two former childhood friends in adversarial adult roles is touching and entertaining. THE CASE OF THE STOLEN MOON serves up an outer-worldly take on the classic detective story dynamic of idealism vs. cynicism. This insightful and innovative short makes me want to read more from this writer. Cool stuff.

This is a beloved short for good reason - mostly how L D Feriend lowers the stakes for needing a chorus to the farcical when Leslie gets stood up by a girlfriend. THE BALLAD OF LESLIE hilariously skewers a tradition in tragedy exemplified by Sophocles' Electra, who has her own chorus too - but much more to complain about - and more recently Sheila Callaghan's heroine in Everything You Touch. BALLAD relates at an ordinary human level. Sometimes life sucks and it helps to have someone who gets your sad and puts it out there for the world to hear.

The droll humor carries the day in CRANBERRY, though George Sapio gives out the sad with the mirth. There are two playful (serio-whimsical?) roles for actors over sixty, and the tour of Malicia's dungeon hurts so good. I like Marley's business-like approach, that he's already interviewed several other Ds that day and his disdainful assessing - "Harlequinesque shack-and-smack," and that Malicia has grander designs than an BDSM session. The ending rocks. If ever a short play calls for a sequel . . . just saying.

With RENEWABLES it's astonishing how much Christine Foster accomplishes in just 10 pages, how easily (it seems) she pulls off this eerie and complex dystopian future where the mental energies of its population are harvested for utilities. Sure the work of Philip K Dick comes to mind, but our entry into this alt-world seems less bumpy. And there's tea. Most brilliant is the idea that ghosts of loved ones are Mutual Manifest Memories. I love the reverse plot-move that the daughter Sybil longs for, rather than fears, a ghostly relative, a taboo act that brings on the unnerving climax. Tremendous!