Recommended by Vince Gatton

It's about the taking of photographs.

Steve Martin's MACRO slows down and beautifully creates for us a portrait in oddly-suspended time, expertly leaving spare but effective clues to what's happening outside its frame.

It's about the taking of photographs, sure.

It's also about how we try to control and bend time in the face of the dreaded inevitable.

It's about fear, and coping, and focus, and clarity, and breath, and memory.

But, sure.

It's also about the taking of photographs.

Holocaust narratives based on real-life survivors' stories can present a number of challenges for playwrights, but Blevins masterfully keeps her eye on the prize here, avoiding all the traps and taking us on a deeply moving, often funny, and thrillingly imaginative theatrical journey through the heart of darkness, asking deep moral questions in a place where morality itself feels like a luxury. Clever magical-realism devices and some thoughtful character doubling help shape Gisella Perl's story into something grippingly watchable, timeless, timely, and relevant. This is how you do it, folks. Brava.

If you were ever a fan of Pinky and The Brain, you will adore Evelyn and Benjy, two small children intent on breaking into their mom’s laptop to discover the secrets of adulthood. Evelyn in particular is a comic gem, a hyper-precocious genius with criminal mastermind instincts, trapped in a six-year-old body; her interplay with weary little brother/minion Benjy recalls classic comic pairings like Abbott and Costello. The intensity of focus, almost-right deductive reasoning, and witty sibling interplay are tremendous fun. Read and enjoy.

David Hilder's dialogue sparkles, his characters reliably witty and intelligent -- which only makes the fear and heartbreak sharper as these beautifully-drawn people grapple with dark forces assembling around and inside them. Hilder's time-hopping and structural sleight-of-hand mix a love story that breathes genuine intimacy, with a harrowing family drama of obligation and frustration, with a destabilizing existential nightmare that might spell the end of everything. A page-turner, and one that actors and directors will champ at the bit to dive into.

If you've wondered whether a short play can be terrifying, warm, likable, romantic, and deep -- and did I mention terrifying? -- all at once, Daniel Prillaman's Kudzu is your answer. Challenging audience assumptions about the people who might be working at a Christian summer camp and always incisive with his metaphors, Prillaman gives us three very relatable characters whose easy banter and relationships exist in a lovely bubble, beyond which something truly unsettling is underway. A great gift to three young actors, and to any program of shorts willing to shake its audience in their chairs.

First of all, there's that opening: the nerve of Craig Houk to sustain that long a sequence of dialogue with literally no one on stage! It's its own little screw-you to convention and expectations, and the suspenseful and charming Southern gothic two-hander that follows is rich in atmosphere, queer cultural history, and juicy family drama. Chewy, chilly, and fully satisfying.

When Charlie approaches Chris on a subway platform, is it a meet-cute, or something more threatening? Or might it be something else entirely? This is a play about the dangers inherent in being a woman in the world, but also about cities, strangers, connections, and community.Tense and charming, all at once.

A wry, tender, and witty love story about burnout and the weight of empathy. Aly Kantor endows Nicky with a magical gift, but it's via a mechanism that requires constant, raw emotional vulnerability to make it work...and the well is running dry. Activists, primary caregivers, nurses, social workers, and anyone whose vocation is caring for others will see themselves here -- as will those who love them, as they watch Dylan's escalating efforts to encourage, cajole, problem-solve, and protect. "Tikkun olam" takes a toll, Kantor seems to tell us: no one can do it alone. Lovely.

The setting may be medieval, but the insights and lessons here about public shaming ring loud and clear in our 21st-Century digital age. It's also just a full-on hoot: bawdy, uncomfortable, and joyful. The characters may be literally locked in place, but the actors will find wide room to play in the agonized Wilkin and magnificently trashy Doxy. Brava.

This old-fashioned, rapid-fire, door-slamming sex farce steeped in Christian Flynn's modern, sweaty, grimy, flat-broke queer aesthetic makes for something fresh, over-the-top, and irresistible. We're firmly in the land of the ridiculous - blackouts! vibrators! goofball accents! ignorant stereotypes and the people who love them! - but it's anchored by a trio with a genuine desire to connect -- or at least bang the hell out of each other. And isn't that what we root for in a comedy? A delightfully-calibrated hot mess.