Recommended by Scott Sickles

Amazing monologue for a Latina actor. Gonzalez addresses questions of global concern regarding the United States's one-eighty from a place of refuge and asylum to a trap waiting to ensnare those who have come seeking safety and a better life. The scope of the piece is as vast as the speech itself is intimate. A miraculous bit of writing.

Old Hollywood's transition from silent film to talkies had the industry in an uproar. Lawing's two-hander elegantly captures that pocket of time like one of Ruth Harriet Louise's classic glamour shots. Shearer's desire to be different than the pristine image her studio head husband wants her to project cunningly symbolizes the control men have always had over how women are perceived in art and entertainment. Through this brief and friendly negotiation between artists, so much is said about the expectations men and society have about women, while never stopping the story to preach. Gorgeous!

When you read this aloud to yourself, and you MUST, have a cup of coffee handy. You'll need it. (If you don't drink coffee, use the prop beverage of your choice. Don't mime it. You'll deprive yourself of the visceral experience of the piece.)

FREAKIN' DELIGHTFUL! If I ever had a stepdad, this is the one I'd want because he's overprotective and embarrassing in all the right ways. The piece is a great one-sided confrontation, incredibly skillful with active exposition using backstory as a weapon or a tool. A joy to perform!

Whirlwind is right. A speedy portrait of a day in the life of a town, kind of like The Simpson's "22 Short Films About Springfield" meets "Amarcord" only in sixty-ish seconds. A marvelous experiment.

If you have an evening of short plays that uses a lot of actors, this would be a great curtain raiser or epilogue for the evening. Given that everyone has only one or two lines (maybe only one), creative doubling could be fun.

An amuse bouche that could only come from the mind of Matthew Weaver.

Starts out sweet and light then hits you with a suckerpunch. Economic storytelling in two pages, the characters are elegant in their simple honestly. Ultimately, a powerful statement not only about the times we live in but about what we've become used to.

What's better than a standing ovation? An audible gasp!

Guess what I just did.

The Taking Tree feels effortlessly personal and its impact is deeply powerful. As the play goes on, the great play-on-words in the title evolves from cute to menacing to a gutpunch, even if you're not thinking about it.

The characters are beautifully drawn, exploiting its nerd-jock dynamic (my turf!) to great effect by circumventing stereotypes from the outset.

A great vehicle for younger actors that would be a gem in any short play festival!

It is no easy feat to use literal baggage to represent metaphorical baggage. It can come off as hamfisted or self-consciously clever. THIS IS HOW YOU DO THAT!

This play is perfect. Just damn perfect.

It takes the trope of one’s older self communicating with one’s younger self and turns it into an intimate, almost brotherly, power struggle. Knowledge is power and one’s middle-aged past is leverage against the naivety of one’s own youth.

153 is a beautiful paean to learning to love yourself and your mistakes and to forgive, celebrate and move on.

Friendly’s Fire is a weird play! Knowing that going in makes the ride smoother as Guy Friendly's psyche kidnaps you on a thrill ride through Hell! Or at least through the hell of Friendly's combat-related PTSD.

What helps the oddness work is that while we have a spaceman, a Queen Bee, the Saint of Thieves, and a talking polar bear, the play is essentially a realistic story told from the subjective point of view of someone spectacularly losing his mind. We see what he sees nomatter how bizarre. Lucid memories ground this phantasmagoria, breaking Friendly's heart and ours.

A beautiful, heartbreaking pantomime about the all to common search for love mired in futility. Matthew Weaver writes longing with a delicate intimacy like no one else.

Beckett for naughty people. As strangely hot as it is preternaturally still.