Recommended by Asher Wyndham

It's a folktale for the stage with a surprising twist; it's a domestic, magical realist comedy. A season for the year is a distinct personality/voice. A clever, fabulous work. If your theater company is interested in producing contemporary folktale-like plays, then choose this play.

Stand-alone historical monologues are rare, and those with a teenager are more rare. Warning Shorts by Everett Robert presents a girl's account of the attacks during Civil War. There is a sense of urgency in this monologue that is lacking in most monologues, a speaker who needs to tell her story. And there are some startling revelations of monstrous cruelty suffered by this girl that I didn't know happened during the war. The monologue reminds us that what we love most about someone who has passed was storytelling and also his/her fight for what is right.

It seems like everything goes wrong for this newly-engaged couple lost in the forest park, but this play proves sometimes you have get lost and figure out the best path together. I enjoyed how the playwright highlighted directly after the proposal the kinds of arguments/disagreements that this couple could expect several years into their marriage. Like her play My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, Lolly Ward uses a clever story concept with an unusual stage setting to address the challenges of sustaining romantic relationships.

This is an ahhhhmazing play! Why hasn't this been produced!?! Produce this play now! The structure (going from present to past and back again), the spectacle (swimming on stage!), the emotional intensity and complexity of the characters makes this a winning play -- it's inspiring! What this play says about relationships, gay or straight, about couples or friends, about teamwork, about dreams and goals, about what's improbable vs what's impossible will leave you treading water for a long time after this play. If I was a producer compiling an an evening of shorts, I'd choose this play.

I read this play before looking at the 'subject matter keywords' and noticing 'painting.' As I read this play, I started to picture the play as a sort of active painting, acrylic characters, their backdrop and the landscape beyond coming into focus, changing shape as the coffee was spilling. It's a play that I can't find a comparison with; it's like being in a funky gallery and seeing the characters morph from Rockwell to something strange. You may think of other painting styles; the experience will be different for different readers.

The comparison between the downing of alcohol and the dissolution of marriage, the poetic descriptions of different drinks and their effects on the taste buds, the talk of children and of loss and unhappiness--all of it makes for a clever, insightful play.

A lot of WTF eyebrow-raising BDSM references, discussion of punishment and humiliation that could easily make some readers discredit this play as not serious. Sapio's play is serious, and it's sweet and sad in what it says about lonely hearts. A play just for kinky seniors...? Nah. It can appeal to kinky adults of all ages because of what it says about relationships, loss and rejection. The play may make you wonder what your safe word would be...

There are plenty of plays where strangers meet, but none are like the two prisoners in Diaz-Marcano's Prison Song. If you like the unexpected intimacy of Albee's Zoo Story or the philosophical intensity of Bernard Marie Koltes' In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields or the perversity and intimacy in the writing of Jean Genet, then you'll love this play. It doesn't matter if your values and morality are not exhibited by these characters; just experience the play, and you will discover something truthful about many relationships: love and violence, tenderness and cruelty are almost always entwined...

Raw emotion, brutal honesty. Not your average graveyard monologue. Your question, Why did she sell her parents' things so cheap? -- is given a shocking answer -- an unsettling revelation for the audience. Dynamic monologue for competition, classroom work, and production.

Like his other short plays, KiKi Pineapple and A Modern Miracle, Martin has created something truly original, I think. This short play is silly and smart, funny and serious just like his other short plays; and like them they can attract a wide wide audience, any demographic really, any community. For this play, the kids could be played by adults, the judges by kids; all adults or all kids -- many casting possibilities. Maybe one day an evening of his short plays in a neighborhood near you! If it happens here, I hope I'm front row!