Recommended by Scott Sickles

A lovely two-hander. While the play requires one male actor and one actor of any age, so long as they're contemporaries, I think it would be especially poignant with more mature actors. Regardless, the characters themselves have a wonderful chemistry.

Adam Richter takes a tried and true situation – "two strangers, initially adversarial, find common ground" – and builds on it with great charm, heart, and aplomb. Easy to produce. I hope it gets done everywhere.

Confession: I strive with great energy and aplomb for the boldness that J. Julian Christopher executes with apparent effortlessness. His writing fills me with a beautiful envy and admiration. Now, onward to this play.

This is the story of a wank.

To explain the pychosexual complexity in these very fast eight pages would be a difficult feat for Kinsey, Masters AND Johnson. Yet, these two people are painfully and deliciously real. They are both impervious and vulnerable, base and noble, confused and determined. Their relationship is a quiet mess even in this tiny, catastrophic, funny moment. Boldly intimate!

One side of a phone conversation that everyone with elderly parents has had at one time or another. And another. And another. And another! Viscerally real, the monologue creates a vivid picture of the speaker's surroundings while taking you through hairpin turns of subject and emotion. It fully captures the simultaneous need and impossibility to get off the phone with a parent who is themselves trying to navigate a confusing and frustrating world.

One side of a phone conversation that everyone with elderly parents has had at one time or another. And another. And another. And another! Viscerally real, the monologue creates a vivid picture of the speaker's surroundings while taking you through hairpin turns of subject and emotion. It fully captures the simultaneous need and impossibility to get off the phone with a parent who is themselves trying to navigate a confusing and frustrating world.

FABULOUS!!! A perfect depiction of misplaced bravado in the self-aggrandizing masculine fifth grader, giving the character just enough wisdom to actually make sense in his newly hormonal tween world, and filled with wonderful details that set the world of the play and the protagonist himself apart. A joy to read aloud. I'd love to see it performed.

And I swear I knew this kid in elementary school!

Warning! Whoever plays Eddie, or even just reads Eddie aloud, needs magnificent breath control! He speaks in amazing, stratospherically spiraling sentences of glorious neurosis and hairpin moods. The play itself is a spectacular man vs himself cacophony turned, to use the play’s language, affirmation. Ultimately, it is as beautiful as it is hilarious... and I had to put the damn thing down at least five times because I was laughing so hard. Wonderfully hysterical and hysterically wonderful!

A cacophonous symphony and or symphonic cacophony, a glorious eruption of words and feelings and beautiful details. One of the best "read you the riot act" monologues you will have the pleasure to read out loud or perform. Rip roaring fun and a complex character study about love, commitment, family, and deciding when enough is enough!

I was taught that the baby Jesus never cried.

I mean, come on...

Matthew Weaver has crafted an almost wordless but definitely not soundless exploration of motherhood - new and unexpected motherhood! - giving the reader a subjective treat and the actor an objective challenge. Part poem/part pantomime, it's a great physical acting experiment! Most of all, it creates a profoundly human glimpse at the early life of Jesus and Mary.

I don't think people in general think of what Jesus must have been like as a child. His mythos goes from manger to savior pretty quickly without taking much time to visit with the carpenter's kid.

That's why this perfect little monologue is so necessary. We see Jesus as a happy, carefree child, yet his parents are in on his destiny, which has already begun to slowly, almost innocently, close in around him. Weaver makes excellent use of subtle references to Jesus's life story, and lands the piece beautifully with a powerful turn.

A beautiful two-character, multi-cultural, multi-generational slice-of-life snapshot of New York City and The American Dream. The two characters seem not to be listening to each other, yet when it's important, it's clear that they've heard, at least on some level. The dialogue is at times poetic, always naturally rhythmic and emotionally resonant. The young woman's confusion is a perfect foil for the older Iranian man's determined joy.

Lovely roles for a young actress and an older Persian actor.