Recommended by Charles Scott Jones

A knock on the door provides a jarring insight. INGROWN FEAR, a splendid short monologue by Marj O’Neill-Butler, has a very natural and easy gait and a disturbing question: How does one cope with information you were never meant to have?

An exciting and classically absurd concept - think Kafka, Ovid, Ionesco - only really funny! I love how playwright Ryan Bultrowicz lays out the challenge of the play. Performing around the not-spoken dialogue of BREAD would be a riotous boon for actors. As an audience member of TWO-TIMING LOAF OF BREAD, I’m thinking, you would (delightfully) get sucked right in by involuntarily filling in the missing misdirections and evasions. Big Big Fun!

The first line of GOIN’ BACK TO GOONSVILLE got me - it’s such a standard in movie classics - it sets the ironic tone. Don’t look back, but if you’re the snarky anti-heroine Amy you get sent back. Her lack of sentimentality is the key to this pushback on our warm and fuzzy cinematic rustic past. The setting of a small coal-mining town is so well chosen and I love it that Vivian C. Lermond shakes off the coal dust, symbolically and literally.

The dramatic question of BURIED TREASURE is will Carol convince her father Ranger - an ex-con grand-larcenist grandfather to her son Trevor - to attend his grandson’s five-year-old birthday party dressed as a pirate. Now that’s cool. I love the way George Sapio layers in the back stories for both Ranger and Carol - and there’s references to Blackbeard and Butch Cassidy too. A compelling play that remains true to itself.

A scintillating play on a sensitive subject written with grace and humor! And maybe feathers. I think Nietzsche wrote - as depressed Em feels initially - that hope was the worst thing in Pandora’s box because it stayed behind - but PANDORA’S BOX OF DONUTS by Aly Kantor offers a philosophical take that ebbs and flows within the shape of Cal and Em’s love for one another. There are many lines that I’m tempted to quote, but don’t want to pre-empt enjoyment. Put this play on your list to read and re-read! It's truly fantastic!

If you’ve worked in retail stores or restaurants or for the airlines, you may feel as Veruth does about holidays. I DON’T DO HOLIDAYS drew mischievous chuckles the whole way, perfect for holiday un-cheer. The satirical parallels ring many bells of truth. And I love the tension between the faux formal speaking of Piotr and Veruth (“Say it not.”) with a future-feeling timeline - as if the U.S. has been conquered by neo-Vikings from space. Daniel Prillaman is as entertaining and thoughtful a playwright as you'll ever find - but you may need Piotr and Veruth's therapist.

RICKSHAW REDUX has such an authentic feel. Playwright John Hilla knows these three characters thoroughly - and I loved spending time with ex-bandmates from the 10-years disbanded punk group Funny Rickshaw. Joe, Gwen, and Borf’s reminiscing on the death anniversary of lead singer Len is funny and melancholy - and it’s an ironic pleasure to dwell on spontaneity long passed.

Though SOCK PUPPET FETISH NOIR is grandly silly, and so much fun as farcical footsie noir - it also comes out of, I'm guessing, the universal aversion we all have for losing socks. And what is comedy when it doesn't come from real pain? (A friend accuses laundry driers of eating her socks because she would never lose one.) The detective genre banter between Jane and "Darrell" would be amazing fun to see performed. Perfect ending, and I love Melvin's "Do the thing" sign. I'm laughing now just thinking about it.

So cool in HOTTER THAN THOREAU that there's a surprising barrier to Coke and Denny having hot sex - and it's not a third party or intruder - but it's just as funny and exasperating for the characters as if it were. I admire the up-and-down tempo of the play that seems to fit with the talk of sex on the trampoline in the basement. Also love that the dialogue suggests movement so well there's no need for stage directions. Lastly, the book talk is hot as hell because it's relationship building.

What a great title for this trio of hilarious plays! DATING'S A BEAST CYCLE perfectly sets the tone with the humor built right in, suggests the cyclical structure of Sue's bad-boy dating predilection, and hints at the underlying desperation. I love Kate Danley's use of repetition, in that the introduction ritual gets funnier with each beastly incarnation. This would be a riot for an audience to see and a blast for actors.