Recommended by Philip Middleton Williams

This is a fun little moment where the playwright's characters get together to wait their next call. To be fair, I've often wondered what my characters are saying about me when I'm not in the room, and this made me laugh... and glance over my shoulder. (I heard that, Bobby.)

I'm pretty sure this scenario has been played out in real life more than once, with or without Zoom, and the twist that Steven Strafford puts on it is great for the stage. It encompasses all the maddening bureaucracy that we encounter, but this time there's a take that makes it all so worth watching. Full disclosure: I've been on both sides, and this piece gets it so right.

It's almost oxymoronic to describe this short work as touchingly cynical, but that does seem to apply to this breathtakingly bold take on how much the glorification of sport has perverted our values. It's done in such a brilliant fashion that even the most outlandish justification for going ahead with the crucial game makes sense. Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend has a perfect ear for the language, the culture, and the emotions at stake, and the landing is both a surprise and exactly what makes it work.

Myths and legends are born within us to explain the demons that haunt us from within. We invent fantastic stories to explain our human conditions to others and to ourselves. In doing so, we learn about us: our limits, our flaws, our fears; those things that make us human. By ascribing them to outside forces, we can either fight them with all our might, or surrender. In this tale of valor, Scott Sickles has given us a finely-crafted tale where all is not lost and hope lives on, as it must. Go forward, Sir Cristobal and Sir Miguel!

A perfect coda to the tale of Jack and Jill in these perilous times, brought to us by Jan Probst, who has already done a turn on the story with her version, "Jill and Jack," which I highly recommended. As I've always suspected, Jill is the smart one.

Nursery rhymes aren't supposed to make sense. Or are they? In this take on a classic, Jan Probst takes our centuries-old but never grown-up characters out for a reality check with mirthful and thought-provoking results. It makes you wonder what we've been teaching our kids all these years just so they can learn the lesson of how words rhyme. And not for nothing do we find out the awful truth.

I almost didn't write this recommendation because it comes too close to my own feelings and sense of loss. But I know that Scott Sickles knows that about me, about us, about all of us who have had just such a moment, and his abject bravery in writing makes it vital that he share it.

I don't know who he was writing it about, but I know that he knows, and that is enough.

We deal with loss in such personal ways that it's nearly impossible to explain it to someone else, not unlike recounting a dream upon awakening. In this short and touching play, Marcia Eppich-Harris shares that moment of trying to express a feeling toward a long-lost best friend, and in doing so gives us an insight to both the letter-writer and the intended recipient. This moment is tender, truthful, and makes the loss all that more bearable and yet unforgettable.

Full disclosure: I've been to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park many times and done all the tours about the hauntings and heard the stories, so this moment in the lives of Sofia and Devan is especially real. We all hope to find a connection with another soul, be they alive or spectral, and the telling of this tale shows how we allow, even invite, our imagination become our hopes, our fears, and wonderment at what is and isn't real.

"Pizza Face" is a truly haunting and deeply felt story told with brutal honesty. I connected on so many levels with it, and I daresay there isn't anyone who reads it who will not know how Ryan feels and how he tries to deal with the overwhelming trauma of growing up. It's all there: the struggle to fit in, the shame of one's own body rebelling against itself, the taunting of the consciousness, and trying to find even a small moment of silent and assuring dignity. This would be a powerful presence on stage.