Recommended by Scott Sickles

There's a moment where I stopped and said "oh shit!" out loud. With a big smile on my face.

What a delightful send up of... dare I call it a trope when it's become shorthand for a fundamental rule – nay, even a LAW - about setups and payoffs???

Vermillion imbues this device (do I mean theatrical device or the gun itself? Discuss!) with the perfect weight and sublime theatricality.

It's a great page of theater! I hope to see it someday! The end of the play is perfection.

I love a good imaginary memoir almost as much as I love a good lobster. Here, it's as though playwright Lawing says "Why not both?" and gives (a rather affable) voice to a rare crustacean.

Oh what a journey it has been on!

Our pincered protagonist is anthropomorphized just enough to get us invested in his IRL odyssey and celebrate the real world efforts of aquarium curators who protect rare marine life rather than serve it.

As joyful as a hot buttered lobster roll! Made with a different lobster of course!

What is there to say? A perfect moment between father and son captured forever on the page. When fathers can't sleep and sons won't, what is there to do but pontificate and poeticize? This tiny play is an infinite cuddle. A spark to warm every heart. A night at the zoo before a day in the sun.

Poet, essayist, and philosopher Paul Valéry once said, “Everything changes except the avant-garde.” Valéry forgot another immutable entity: the asshole. Assholes can’t change because they “are the noncorporeal space through which shit passes.” (I’m quoting me!)

I don’t know if Valéry was an asshole, but this losthesome shitbaggery Edward Gordon Craig sure was!

Medlin provides a perfect target for your contempt in a sendup of self-proclaimed genius that’s as hilarious as it is merciless! This would be a dream to perform, direct and design! Somebody do it!!!

The correct answer is “An African or European swallow?” But I digress! (Also, it isn’t.)

Deb Cole puts a great spin on an old riddle while mercilessly sending up the younger generation’s (or even people in general’s) overwhelming knee jerk addiction to umbrage.

A great dad-and-daughter piece that would still work if the characters were up to ten years younger than described. Oh the tirade! Oh the trickery!

Oh, fuck you!

Heyman has fashioned a monologue illustrating a predicament that is, in equal measure, fantastical and familiar, cathartic and confounding, amusing and abhorrent!

In short, it is steeped in and reeks of the truths inherent in the business end of our craft, the end run by overblown amateurs with an inflated sense of their own and their institution’s importance to their meager and isolated cultural landscapes.

I am simultaneously furious and vindicated!

And again I say to this producer… fuuuuck youuuuu!

When the character description says “any age,” I cast in my head out of the box. My version had Human 1 as an adult and human 2 as a child.

It worked like gangbusters!

This is a beautifully simple play about the consequences of a love you know, without doubt or question, will end in loss.

The relationship between the humans is entirely dependent upon casting which means you get to choose what kind of story you want to tell and each will have its own poignancy. Play with age, gender, race, ability, even period.

The possibilities are as infinite!

Not every origin story begins with a radioactive spider or exploding planet. In fact, most begin just like this: with passions quelled and a dream deferred.

This is the story of an artist who refuses to sell out.

One can certainly respect Sisyphus’s integrity. Why devote his talents to the establishment when he can live an honorable life where livelihood doesn’t compromise creativity? Alas, sometimes one’s ideals aren’t always ideal.

It’s a fun piece with great rhythms and jaunty roles. But don’t dismiss it as a sketch. It has much more to say.

So THAT’S what those ungrateful bastards are saying behind our backs!!!

Well, did it occur to you characters that if you actually DID something interesting and MEANINGFUL it might not be such a STRUGGLE for us playwrights???

But no… You just bitch and moan about being cut when you no longer serve your own story!!! And when we finally come up with something OUT OF NOTHING, you’re all “what is this? This is weird!”

I’m sorry, WERE YOU BUSY DOING SOMETHING ELSE???

Thank you, Greg, for bringing their disloyalty to our attention.

THEY WILL BE DEALT WITH!

This is the best Scott Sickles play Scott Sickles didn't write.