Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

I just love the casual charm of THE HAUNTING OF BELLFLOWER MANOR by Enid Cokinos - that rare ghost story that isn't out for screams of terror or laughter. This HAUNTING is refreshingly anti-climatic. A ghost can seek the simple pleasures that a life cut-short once held. A spirit maid named Mertle interfacing with a robot vacuum and a Ouija rug is an amazing melding of the old and new in this fine ghost story.

What a magnificently prolonged scare. This slowly escalating and menacing doctor’s visit. (Un)Comfortably Numb to pun on Pink Floyd’s great doctor-visit song. HEARTBURN by Daniel Prillaman hammers away at the limitations of science - particularly the medical profession - for not wanting to handle anything that doesn’t come within tight preset parameters. My favorite aspect is Patient’s freaking-out while trying to keep it within the confines of patient-nurse-doctor etiquette. Wonderful insightful writing as always from a terrific playwright.

For a short play that uses sound - the cacophonous symphony of frogs in a pond near a French Restaurant - to create unease - THE FROG’S REVENGE by Nora Louise Syran is hard to beat. For its brutal and sensual efficacy and deep resonances, it reminds me of Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty. I will now have even a harder time someday trying leg of frog. Terrific work!

Terrific setting, a drive thru tex-mex joint with two chairs as the front seats of a car. The characters Cameron and Jules are two broken souls connected by separate miseries. And that the whole thing takes hold at the pace of a fast food transaction makes for a taut, theatrical scene that shines a brief street light on how life can mess these folks up. A single serving of DRIVE THRU offers a window into who Cameron and Jules are and makes you care where they are going.

Most of us have been there, the loud mouth at the library, but what’s fascinating about A QUIET PLACE is that Luke’s cell-monologue is funny and draws you into Debbie Lamedman’s scenario as an eyewitness to a social crime. Luke thinks he’s performing an invaluable ritual service to his quarreling friends, which is entertaining but disturbing the peace at the library. His role as a hero in his small world makes him a villain in the larger picture, a dynamic that rings true in our world of self-centered citizens. A fine play.

An eerie carnival play with a mysterious refrain. In TAKE A DEEP BREATH, Nora Louise Syran takes us on a trip through the Haunted Hall of Mirrors through unsettling moments from Harriet’s past. The use of a crossing guard as a guide is compelling. This would be a blast for a creative team to bring to the stage. Mirrors make for terrifying intimate windows.

As we go through urban life, the spark of anti-suburban rage gets buried under layers of pro-suburban affectation - or would if not for worm and rubio who bring that rage screaming to the surface. Christian Flynn's life is a fuck is a war cry to fight for the identity of souls sucked up by weddings and funerals. The monologues are exhilarating rants of fire. The garbage - stomping and venting obscenities emerge as vital counter rituals to the vanquishing orthodoxy of spirit sanitation. Rarely will you encounter a short work of such potent urgency.

The eventual connection between seeming opposites - digital native FJ and her ornery Kansas grandmother Audrey - is so lovingly and painstakingly detailed it takes your breath away. I read BEES late at night and again in the morning and it gets better and better though my admiration started out big. FJ’s job as a natural language processor helps give her access as a sacred plant waterer or Libation Bearer to a ghost from Audrey’s past. Love Audrey’s heirloom seeds and hivemind insights. An astounding play as brilliant for the head as it is for the heart.

"Once you touch a piece, you have to move it, and once you let go of the piece, you can't take your move back." I love how specifically integrated the game of chess is in CHECK PLEASE by James Perry. The suspense is always there and the action cuts against the grain of playing a game for your soul. Nice work.

So cool that LA 8AM by Mark Harvey Levine was on the NPX homepage, resulting in a flashback to 2012 when I saw it at the Secret Theater in Long Island City, New York. What a methodical and melancholy and magical play! I remember leaving the festival stunned by how good it is. Sometimes sadness is so beautiful you savor it. Less is much more - and the most nothing argument turns out to be everything. I could watch this play over and over again.