Recommended by Philip Middleton Williams

How different cultures celebrate has always been a part of the Christmas season: think of the different names for Santa Claus (Pere Noel, Father Christmas, Santy Clau',) and the emblems of the season: mistletoe, for one. In this loving and engaging short piece, Nora Louise Syran gives us a look at American and French traditions, their clash and co-mingling, and the happy results of putting a bit more of a splash in the eggnog. Joyeux Noel!

I love stories that are allegorical without being preachy, life-lessons that aren't all caught up in Moral Clarity, and get to the honest and harsh truth without making you wish you had a cup of hemlock tea at your elbow. Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn's tale of Olivia visiting the tourist gift shop in The Darkness is exactly that, and the depiction of Flurk and Ramiform are not so off the mark for folks we know that calling this a fantasy may not be quite accurate. After all, there are just so many realities we can live with.

Scott Sickles knows how to get to the heart of a matter -- as well as other involved body parts -- in this short and dare I say loving piece. The world of superstar rockdom has always had an aura of fantasy with an underlayer of sadness that the glory of attention is a facade that shows its fragility, and the people who make up that world as well as their wives and lovers know all too well that the patina will fade. And then what have we got? What begins as farce ends as reality and truth. Exactly right.

This moment of hilarity is priceless. The rapid-fire jokes, puns, and name-dropping is magnificent and worth every groan. My only complaint is what do I have to do to get mentioned in a John Busser play? What am I, chopped liver?

The tension in this short play is set forth at the outset as these two trapped men contemplate their fate in the dark, lit only by a lamp that could signal more danger at any moment. In the hands of any other playwright it could terrifying, but Arthur M. Jolly has shown me so many different ways in his writings his ability to create the suspense that keeps you fixated on what will happen to Thomas and Carl, as well as how they anticipate what could happen. I found myself holding my breath, waiting to hear...

For those of us of a certain age who recall the J.M. Barrie stories of Peter Pan via Disney and Mary Martin on grainy black-and-white TV, this 21st century take on the characters and plots is a marked and surprisingly adept escalation of the imagination of little lost boys and their dreams of high-sea adventures. The conflicts of Peter and Captain Hook go beyond Neverland and into a far scarier and deadly realm: real life and the dreadful truth that we spend our adulthood trying repair the damage of growing up. Even so, it is uplifting and hopeful.

What do writers write about when they write about writers writing? They seek the truth behind the characters they think they've created, but in truth they are at the mercy of those characters and their own truths. In this creative and honest examination by Sam Heyman, the drive to be true to what they want to say is at the mercy of what the readers want to read, and that's where the conflict truly arises. This is an imaginative and intriguing tale that leaves you wondering where the real world ends and fiction begins. Bravo, Sam.

Turning the money-churning wedding/baby/whatever shower business on its head, Lavinia Roberts does a great job of twisting the knife into the wounds of separation and heartache to a hilarious parody of the business of exploiting happiness in a tour-de-force of bubbly cynicism and pent-up anger. At the Midwest Dramatists Conference 2023, the actor playing Andrea pulled out all the stops, and the result left us laughing and wiping away tears.

There's a truism that says the prison with the strongest bars is our own mind. In this piece by Greg Lam, a prisoner is offered the choice to serve his sentence in real or virtual time. The catch is that the sentence is just as long either way... but is it? This is the kind of dilemma that makes for a great play because it forces us, the audience, to think as hard as the characters about the choice. The willing suspension of disbelief isn't just coming from the characters: we're as much involved as they are.

Bringing life to a real person from history can be both dangerous and enlightening: where does the playwright draw the line between history and creativity? In this short play by Debra Cole, the balance is not just maintained but enhanced by showing Ella Harper to be more than a sideshow. She is interviewed by a cagey reporter who seeks to exploit her celebrity and expose her as a fraud, only to find that that not only is she the person she claims to be, she makes sure the world knows that she knows exactly what she wants.