Recommended by Philip Middleton Williams

  • THE FERRYMAN’S APPRENTICE (ten-minute play)
    27 May. 2020
    Having just recently been through the loss of my father, this play struck me deeply. But it did not hurt; in fact, the wisdom and comfort of the story is to realize that death is more than just the ending of one life, but the continuation in another way: memories, cherished moments, even unremarkable times spent together. Dwight Yancey uses the Greek myth of the River Styx and Charon the boatman and inspiring poetry to tell a universal tale of loss, regret, understanding, and love.
  • Quit While You're Behind
    26 May. 2020
    Matt Harmon blends Samuel Beckett's sense of space and stage with the agit-prop of Clifford Odets and gives us a powerful drama of silent struggle against forces beyond this one man's control. The build-up to the climax is powerful and inevitable, and the tension doesn't go away when the lights go out.
  • CONTINUED ON PAGE 12 - Monologue
    26 May. 2020
    The publication of the names of the dead from Covid-19 on the front page of the New York Times and the inspiration for this monologue came the day before my father died. He was not a body any more than the names and dates and figures on this list, so reading this moment of brilliant reflection touched me in a way we all should feel: bodies are one thing, but souls are another. I don't believe in coincidence. I do believe in inspiration, and this piece is proof of it.
  • One For The Chipper
    24 May. 2020
    "The Bad News Bears" meets up with the road company of "Damn Yankees," all in the spirit of diversity and actually winning a game. Adam Seidel channels all the right energy into this team of misfits and wins your heart. And why not? Who wants to see a play about a bunch of winners? This is great fun!
  • THE SNORING SONATA
    24 May. 2020
    This had a very familiar ring to it, and I smiled all the way through to the punchline. Spot-on funny, and if you've shared the situation, you know exactly what Vivian Lermond is showing us. Yay!
  • ___________ ( a monologue)
    23 May. 2020
    While I think a lot of readers could rightly see this as a lament of losing someone they thought they knew, I can also see it very much as how one might feel when one loses someone even if they were close, in love, together, and are now gone. The layers are many in these lines of poetry, and it spoke to me of something I would think, say, and pray no matter how deep the connection was. The simplest words are often the truest.
  • Disengaged Bedfellows (1 minute play)
    23 May. 2020
    This is both a play and a poem; very succinct and powerful. Just a few words and you know everything...
  • Aces Are Feverish
    23 May. 2020
    I can tell when a playwright truly has fun with his writing and this characters, and in the case of "Aces Are Feverish," Matthew Weaver has so much fun in this send-up of hard-boiled detective film-noir play that does great honor to Dashiell Hammett. This hits all the right notes in all the right places, and I can just imagine it being done by the company of the Carol Burnett Show with all the fun that would come with it. All it needs is to be staged in black and white with an Adolph Deutsch score.
  • Ben's Key
    23 May. 2020
    This fun little romp through history and time is told in such a way that you, dear Reader, despite all the modern conveniences, might be convinced that Ben's time was better than our own. This would be a great curtain-raiser for a production of "1776."
  • SACK THE QUARTERBACK
    22 May. 2020
    This is a great monologue that shows how lessons are learned in life in ways we don’t anticipate. I’m sure there are plenty of actors who would jump at the chance to do this for any festival or an audition.

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