Recommended by Adam Richter

"Intentions Matter" is a tender and heartbreaking play about an intensely complicated stepfather-daughter relationship. What I loved about this play is how Jack Levine doesn't show any of the traumatic events but instead gives us the character's responses after the fact. (Yeah, yeah, I know: "Show, don't tell." Nuts to that.)

The result is we get to experience the emotional aftermath, and the experience is all the richer for it.

Well done, Jack!

There's so much to unpack in this seemingly straightforward monologue about a cheating husband (with terrible taste in Valentine's Day gifts, IMHO). Performers and audiences alike would be well-served by this compact but layered (and brilliantly funny) monologue. Great work!

If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself. Unfortunately, Gerta's job requires two people, and Doolittle is clearly not the right man for the job. I loved the righteous anger, impatience and thirst that explodes from Gerta's short and laugh-out-loud funny (though not to Doolittle) speech.

And you know — KNOW — that he's going to come back with the wrong soda. But that's giving away too much.

Bravo, Scott!

The punchline in this brilliant one-minute play delivers so perfectly because the setup leads you to believe there's no punchline at all. This is an absolutely amazing story of homecoming and homesickness. Brilliant!

Oof.
Scott Sickles knows how deliver an emotional gut punch with the force of a wrecking ball, and here he does it in the course of a single minute.
This play will sit with you for much longer than one minute.
Oof.

"Jesus wept." With friends like these, it's no wonder.

Steven G. Martin delivers a clever, absorbing and funny modern sendup of The Last Supper, casting Jesús as the party host who can do no right and all of his friends as doubters who are determined to ruin (what could be) their last night together. The misadventures of this failed dinner party make for a wonderfully entertaining short play. I would love to see this on stage. Bravo!

Jack Levine has a terrific knack for putting seemingly ordinary people in absurd situations and spinning it into multilayered comic gold. “Blissfully Yours” starts with what seems like a silly premise — newlyweds on a bus — and slowly pulls back the lens to reveal the drama and struggles that this young couple has faced so far, and will certainly face in the future. Plus, it’s laugh-out-loud funny. This would be great fun for audiences to see I’ve on stage, so I hope someone makes it happen soon. Great work as always!

What a sweet and laugh-out-loud play about the complexities of love! Charlie the agèd cupid is a terrific foil to Desiree, who's looking for a doubles partner. Though the play is short, Tracey Jane takes us through all the stages of romantic love and shows why it's still important to make connections, no matter where we are in life.

As well as the individual pieces in this collection work on their own, "Playing on the Periphery" is even better as a unified piece. Scott Sickles has given us four wonderful and true-to-life child characters in Daphne, Bertram, Zoey and Robert, and to watch their relationships develop from the first monologue through the final ensemble piece makes you love them even more.

Representation matters, especially in children's entertainment. I hope that LGBTQ+ kids see themselves in this delightful play and feel uplifted.

A lovely monologue that's a nice tribute from one of the most prolific playwrights on NPX to one of the most prolific readers on NPX. This made me smile.