Recommended by Doug DeVita

Oh, I love this monologue. In just a few, rich minutes, Rinkel captures a lifetime of thoughts while gazing at favorite pieces of art in a favorite museum. A deeply affecting piece of art itself, this monologue is a gift for whoever performs it, and for whoever has the chance to experience it, contemplate it, and perhaps revisit it again, and again, and again.

In five crisply written pages, Philip Middleton Williams turns a sour lemon into the sweetest lemonade whilst delivering a subtly sharp “fuck you” to a lame-brained hypocrite, and he does it with wonderfully wry elegance and style.

Bravo, Philip!

Substituting a scalpel for a pen, Garrison rips into decades of self-defeating gay dating norms, and in ten quick, painfully funny minutes exposes and decimates a certain type of gay personality while giving his protagonist a complete and enormously satisfying journey to newly minted self-confidence. Wonderful.

Weirdly wonderful? Wonderfully weird? Full of weirdness and wonder? All of the above? You decide. I don’t really care, because I’m still catching my breath from laughing so hard at Chauncey and his oh-so-real problems with his girlfriend, his human, and a bureaucratic form.

I read this tonight because I guess the universe was telling me I needed to read this tonight.

Beautiful. Necessary. And BEAUTIFUL!

An intense bit of fun from Sickles, with a delicious “Hold my beer” twist that ratchets up the tension and the playful horror.

More spicy, sweet, and savory sibling rivalry and revelry from Zaffarano, as two sisters' expectations of each other don't match up with their realities. Totally delicious and totally winning, this short comedy features two great roles for women and serves up a lot of laughter and warmth, with just enough heat to give it a little kick.

Dave Osmundsen has categorized "The Dummy Class" as a "work-in-progress," and indeed it does have a few rough edges to be smoothed out with further exploration. But what is already in place, ie: deeply realized and deeply lovable characters and a sense of righteous vexation simmering just under the surface, keep it heartfelt but not cloying. I'm looking forward to seeing how Osmundsen develops and polishes this script as he delves deeper into it.

There is a lightly scented whiff of the Southern Gothic family drama hovering over this poignant comedy, despite its being set in Cleveland. Secrets, squabbles, death, and religious superstitions are expertly mixed by Zaffarano into a tart, sweet, and smooth cocktail that goes down easy but nonetheless keeps you enough off balance to enjoy the buzz, but still feel the sting as the bourbon kicks in. Terrific, touching work, with great roles for older actresses to sink their teeth into.

Julie Zaffarano's "True Colors," a Coronavirus/ZOOM based play with more than a nod to "King Lear" and his dysfunctional family's property squabbles, is terrifically nasty, theatrically bitchy fun, with a wonderful twist at the end.