Recommended by Steven G. Martin

A perfect one-minute amusement: some snark and bite coupled with an insider's lament about submitting plays. The irony of seeing this performed in a festival would be irresistible.

Tabaque shows the riotously funny and quietly somber sides of anger in this short play. Annie is loud, mean, and ridiculous when confronting the corporate fast food syndicate and her no-good friends who don't support her. But she's also angry at the losses in her life and at being overlooked. Funny, theatrical, personal stuff here. A terrific character.

Great fun. This short play spoofs the "Encyclopedia Brown" mysteries, sure, but it also contrasts eras well. (Spoiler: the new millennium seems a lot grittier than the 1960s.)

Higbee's charming folktale will delight adults and children alike. It's a very stylized script: the foundation is its storybook logic, the characters are well cast in the "fool" mode of classic tales, and the comedy is punctuated with physical humor.

Do everyday people care even a smidgen about moral complexities? Are we just self-centered, selfish automatons who can't imagine the impact of our actions on others? Has "NO WHAMMIES!" become the battle cry of chai-drinking, dead-eyed, pop-culture-suffocated suburbanites who are more receptive to conditioning than Pavlov's dogs?

Read Ruben Carbajal's terrific short play, produce it. It is funny as hell, ridiculous and slap-sticky, yes, but also sharp and pointed.

Pelham's terrific plot will make audiences reexamine their perspective about the actions and characters in this short play several times. Questions about identity and the given situation build and grow throughout, but Pelham's skill at building worlds and defining characters and stakes will keep an audience well-oriented as secrets are revealed. Beautifully written science fiction.

Applaud Hansen (rightfully so) for the structure, the dialogue, and the theatricality of "I Hate This (A Play Without the Baby)", but it's the range of emotions that leave the lasting impact.

We watch David, the character, struggle to navigate and re-orient himself as he understands there are no rules -- range of emotions, people's responses, length of time -- to grieving. It's a humane play.

Delaney has found a perfect match between tone and subject: comedy and the search for employment. Orson and Louella demean themselves in some of the worst jobs ever and they note the dehumanizing rules of the employment game, but through Delaney's structure, plot, and dialogue, they find a sliver of a possibility of a chance for fulfillment.

Minami's short, dark comedy will jolt the audience as it moves from theatre games and promises of clarity and inner peace immediately into cult leadership, group-think, violence, and suppression.

Bohannon's skill at creating atmosphere and tone is on full display here. Starting with playful, friend-to-friend banter/teasing, Bohannon slowly shifts into suspense and terror through dialogue and reaction. That shift makes "Edmund Fitzwater Doesn't Have Answers for You" so many things: a horror story, a critique on technology's pervasiveness, and a dark comedy about friendship.