Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

Besides the cool banter and off-beat humor, I think what makes BACKSEAT DRIVER such a satisfying ride is the motif of mysterious caring. The play's focus is on Rose who never appears in the play and for whom Darcy is a figure in the fog of a drunken New Year's Eve - while unbeknownst to Darcy, her drunken uninvited guest Tina shares a parallel motive. Scott Mullen pulls off a 2-part magician's trick of sweet over-protectiveness and the caring is contagious. A favorite bit is Tina's trying to guess Darcy's name. Inspired work.

As the title suggests, NEW KID NEXT DOOR is a universal, one most of us experienced as kids, but Razielle steadily becomes unlike any other new kid. I love Arthur M Jolly's patient storytelling, the early use of repetition, how Kevin can't get over how the newcomer has never seen fireworks, his sister Simone taking this up only to discover that it includes fireworks on television. So much of this play depends on beautifully crafted implications, the savagely weird and bloody irony that the fireworks are well underway offstage. I wouldn't tweak a darn thing about this gem. Nice work.

One of the quietist, most surprising plays, EIGHT DRAFTS is gorgeously constructed and very moving. I admire how Marcia Eppich-Harris builds the backstory through nurturing, constructive dialogue and drafts of letters, rather than from quarreling (as so often happens in married-couple plays). And I love Kate for her dreaming of, thinking about, and grieving over her high school friend and sweet heart. EIGHT DRAFTS with its deep emotional journey makes a case for all of us being more open about our feelings for long lost souls, for honoring our dead with sorrow, instead of moving on. Thank you so much!

Whoa - THE GET-TOGETHER feels composed like a song you want to hear over and over - for its elusiveness, for grim sounds that pair up so well with scary visuals, for the truncated interplay of Lora and Cassidy, and for the way it washes over you with shocks of recognition and macabre imagination. Daniel Prillaman manages to write this savvy horror tale from the periphery of a party - suspense from a bedroom as absurdly gripping as the most arresting scenes of Ionesco - a pitch-perfect fragment of fear. The combo of excess and restraint is irresistible. Superb job!!

I love this earl-of-sandwich Hamlet and his ghostly dad who neglected him (but hasn't forgotten him). Funny as HAMLET'S REVENGE is, Martha Patterson's modern take on this father-son conundrum rings true in our world of dysfunction. How many modern dads want payback for their absentee fathering? It also rings true about Shakespeare's play, as the father ghost has to remind his speechifying son of his long postponed vengeance. Part of the charm of this short play is how easy it is to see happening. Great job.

Quite a feat to pull off 25 years of Missy and Ron's hilarious and sad journey from the top of the wedding cake! Emma Goldman-Sherman delights as she enlightens in MAN & WIFE. The plot and character twists are deployed with aplomb. And EGS's superb use of technique & theatrical instincts makes this 2-actor play feel richly populated with children and relatives. A favorite scene among many is "Mary and Joe Move In" in which Missy's parents are made completely visible to the imagination in all of their ingloriousness. Would love to see this staged with multiple sets of actors.

Shakespeare's no stranger to campy horror (see Titus) and that he comes stumbling back from the undiscovered country a zombie makes this uproarious 10-minute romp in a Stratford-on-Avon cemetery a dark delight. In the hands of a lesser playwright than Mark Harvey Levine, SHAKESPEARE LIVES! might have died on stage (pun intended), but the side-splitting jokes are perfectly balanced between Bard references and gags and the marvelous use of props and slapstick comedy. Three idiosyncratic roles, as well as a disassembled car, a tennis racket, and the lover's object of affection keep it insanely rewarding and a must-see. Will Done!

SO MUCH to praise about Madison Wetzell's funny and deadly serious play - the droll wit of Allyson and Hero, (for example when the sentient radio Sony asks how they got their name, Hero says "It is written on your face"), the pushback against human assumptions, how the repartee of the machines works to create empathy and a sense of doom for us old gods, and the simple, high-stakes action. I love the monster title, pieced together, how it serves as a label for the play as artifact and as epilogue for what follows. CREATIVITY JUMPS OFF THE PAGE!

A charm-your-socks-off short play about a father and son reckoning. I'LL BE THERE is as deep as it is clever and makes the most of its woodsy location. The insights that Philip Middleton Williams reaps are the kind that come with time. I love the central metaphor, how a favorite bird-watching spot in the forest draws Dan to the spirit of his father Clyde. The talk between the living and the lived is just right and the sacred hole of their communion is perfectly placed as the past gets put to rest and put to sweet rumination.

In his ten-minute horror dynamo - OF NIGHT SHADOWS - John Mabey makes wonderful use of a window and a third character who doesn't enter or speak but is always there. Angus and Matilda grapple with his eerie existence - as if their lives and marriage depend upon it - until the chilling conclusion. Would love to experience this work in a dark musty theater, to feel the atmosphere the two characters work in harmony to create and I love it that Angus and Matilda can be any age. Will their marriage survive? Only the shadow knows.