Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

The invention of the light bulb began the decline of the demon lurking in the shadows, and now Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn's CREAK with an assist from a child demonstrates the mixed-blessing of our tech society. The closet monster of our childhood imaginations has given way - in this one-minute thriller - to something far worse.

It’s my reading experience that park bench plays are very hard to write - something always goes badly (as in ponderous exposition), but OVERTIME by Wendy Vogel is a park bench play that goes wonderfully right. Most of the play is a somehow simultaneously uneasy and reassuring conversation between three women watching children play. They are reassuring in their careful motherly observing and uneasy because there’ s the sense that something terrible is about to happen. I love most that it reminds us of the love from our mothers that has gone into us. A fine play.

It’s a funny, engaging play throughout, but the set-up of THE CURSE by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend is perfect. And I love knowing what being in this play is taking the protagonist Beth away from. An old false rule of storytelling is to take a premise to its extreme, but Lisa again and again foils this by writing satisfying anti-climatic plays - pulling the rug out of maximalist expectations. I also love plays that revolve around a character who doesn't appear. And it's a marvelous boon to imagine an avenging mermaid under the sea.

Some things never get old - like the moon - or the way Rand Higbee teases out the premise for MOON IN A BARREL. This comic triumph of wit and physical humor serves as inspiration - for the entertainer in me - to write plays for a wide age-range with terrific humor accessible to all. I’ve read it laughing and picturing a whole auditorium breaking up. Excellent.

WHEN IN ROME has pleasant associations with seeing a friend star in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. But this one has better title, better gags. The Romanesque names Morey Norkin comes up with are knee-slappers. The opening joke puts the silliness in motion and Norkin saves the best joke for last. And the homewrecker Isosceles Triangula is a force to be farced with.

WHEN IN ROME has pleasant associations with seeing a friend star in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. But this one has a better title, better gags. The Romanesque names Morey Norkin comes up with are knee-slappers. The opening joke puts the silliness in motion and Norkin saves the best joke for last. And the homewrecker Isosceles Triangula is a force to be farced with.

Yes, she makes the brownies with love. Also with racism and homophobia. A fine monologue from Donald E. Baker, a reminder to me in diverse Hell's Kitchen that there are such folks as Mabel out there.

STRINGS by Brian Cern is a new take on a familiar story. In fact it quite cleverly, and with a modern twist, circles back to the gender dynamic of the Pygmalion - Galatea myth that has fascinated generations of writers and readers. In performance I think the string action sequence with Lucrezia and Matt would be arresting and I like how the play’s physical movement pairs with the closing rhetorical flourish.

As social discourse has gotten meaner, it occurred to me that the meanness isn’t just for the living. Which is where THE PYSCHOPOMP, a brilliant two-hander in a car, by Ali Kantor, comes in. That we focus on the sensational negative - that ghosts are only known for the worst thing that ever happened to them - and that we aren’t better with our not-yet-dead. I love the modern parallel the driver Bethany makes with a haunted afterlife: “It’s like the TikTok kids who haven’t figured out that the internet is forever.” A fantastic ghost story.

It’s so exciting when a writer comes up with an ambitious idea and teases it out perfectly. IN A TIGER’S EYE gives us the conversation between the spirits of two adult tigers behind glass at the tiger exhibit in the hall of Asian mammals at the New York Museum of Natural History. With great sensitivity and insight - through the spirit speak of Mahavir and Atma - playwright William Meurer gives us a poignant new take on ourselves and the animal kingdom we have so maligned. Tremendous play you will want to read, see, and hold dear.