Recommended by Doug DeVita

OUCH! This argument is painful. Painfully awkward, painfully truthful, and oh, so painfully funny. Neil Radtke has distilled thousands of years of carnal battle into ten delightful pages of misguided seduction that ends, well… with a bang. A totally apropos, wonderfully surprising, and (this can’t be said too many times) painfully funny bang that will leave one gasping for breath.

A fascinating glimpse into how an interactive murder mystery is constructed, this is oodles of fun in its own right. Wonderfully over-the-top characters, thickly and smartly plotted, and both funny and DRAMATIC, it’s as enjoyable to read as it must be to see performed all around you.

Past relationships come back to haunt us, often in unexpected ways; the bittersweet feelings of a middle aged man whose ex has been deceased for three years, and faced with a surprise visit from a young debt collector, are mined with a sure hand. The emotions are genuine, the characters are deceptively complex, and the resolution is touching, but satisfying. Charming, sad, and lovely.

This is ten minutes of magic. For realz.

If you’re of a certain age, Little Jackie Paper’s adventures on the beach with a dragon named Puff hold a special place in both your memory and your heart. Andrew Rosdail plays on that nostalgia in this heartbreaking piece, a search for a past and the longing to reclaim a magical childhood that may or may not ever have existed. Exquisitely sad and beautifully rendered, I defy anyone who grew up with the song not to shed a few tears; the ending is devastating.

Who really wants to clean out their garage, deep diving into all those dusty, dark corners and deal with whatever awful things might be hiding there? In Dan Borengasser’s whimsically funny short play, cleaning out the garage becomes a metaphor for tackling prejudice and xenophobia; he has a light touch that nonetheless stings – like a scorpion with small pincers and a fat tail, the bite may be poisonous – but there is an antidote in compromise, and we’re left with a lovely sense that this particular garage will survive its deep cleanse, and be better for it.

This is marriage. There’s not much else I can say except to applaud Malone for how effectively and concisely he captures all the joys and woes of marital co-habitation in a scant, but hilarious, 15 pages.

A nimble feat of literary theatricality, Steven G. Martin’s stage adaption of the Edgar Allan Poe short story is just as thrilling, frightening, and macabre, and just as darkly humorous. What fun it will be to see it staged!

Self-promotion, self-importance, self-delusion… all come under attack in this brief, sharply funny monologue delivered by a desperately insecure and insincere TV host whose star has faded. Norr captures this sad personality beautifully, and we both laugh at, and cry for, her character’s pathetic attempt at relevance.

Gatton captures the longing and, ultimately, disappointment when a dream is denied simply because one is not gifted with the necessary equipment to realize the dream. Beautifully aching monologues and touching relationships, punctuated with smart jabs of humor throughout, make this one of the loveliest short plays I’ve read in a while.