Recommended by Vince Gatton

A quiet, gentle drama about unspeakable cruelty wrapped in loving care, and a stomach-churning snapshot of very recent history. I sometimes worry that younger folks think this kind of story is a work of imagination, or exaggeration...and I'm grateful to Paul Donnelly for the wretched reminder that it is not.

Hilarious and grim, and the joke's on us -- as actors, sure, but mostly as Americans. I don't want to say any more for fear of spoiling the sly, dark humor of this terrific short. Read it and weep. And laugh. And weep.

This gentle, painful, and beautiful short play expands from the heartbreaking specifics of what happened to Elijah McClean into a universal meditation on sorrow and action -- and the many ways, big and small, that we attempt to honor the dead and make this sometimes-terrible world slightly less terrible. DC Cathro's light touch and frank approach allow for deep feeling in very few pages. Lovely, and one I'll think about for a long time.

I love this. Love it, love it, love it: the magical realism, the history, the wit, the perfectly-timed reveals, and then that perfect ending. I love Tim's precociousness, his clarity about who he is - which, even though it doesn't feel to him like it's worth very much, is of course everything. Genuinely funny with well-earned sentiment, this was a home-run in my book.

Haunting, caustic, and mysterious, this icy grey hug of a play gets at something huge and ineffable about grief at its most fresh and raw. We haven't all driven to the far north just to *not* see the Northern Lights...but anyone who's experienced a sudden, shocking loss will recognize Lena's sense of displacement, of a need that can't be realized, of being exposed to the elements...and that strange liminal state in which the coldest of comforts is the comfort you most crave. Sharp, unflinching, and darkly beautiful.

I love a comedy -- any play, really -- that pops with this much life and works on this many levels. Hilarious dialogue, characters to really bite into (yup, I said that), an excellent dawning reveal, further surprises, and most of all a central metaphor that's both fun and loaded with resonance: sexuality, body image, diet culture, gender expectations...all of these are there in this delicious story about appetites, and the special permissions we feel we need to give ourselves to get what we want. This does everything I want a short play to do.

"How can we ever know what anyone else is going through?"

This beautiful little play, a private one-on-one moment at a high school reunion, explores how such moments can actually change the course of a life. A memory which looms large for one person can be a lost blip for another, of course, but this wise little play knows that doesn't diminish its meaning and impact. Alli Hartley-Kong has given us lived-in characters with likable self-awareness, winningly natural dialogue, and a gentle emotional urgency that I found captivating. Gratitude and grace, beautifully expressed in ten lovely minutes.

A recurring theme in Christian St. Croix’s writing is the tension between a wounded wariness of love, and an overwhelming, irresistible faith in its power. Here he gives us a ritual of tales told in the moonlight - tales of love in fantasy, horror, and apocalyptic trappings, but love stories nonetheless. St. Croix’s language is soaringly poetic, yet still grounded by real-life detail: a work uniform, a box of muffin mix, and an ill-timed phone call satisfyingly tether the vastdeep emotion to real-world characters with pulses, jobs, and actual lived lives. Another beautiful, poignant winner.

A lovely and heart-tugging entry in the hilarious, sexy, and moving Beauregard and Zeke series, this one gives us a whole someone else's story, quietly sitting there just out of view. A masterful example of telling you a lot with a little, and of how love between boys has changed - and not changed - since the seemingly-ancient-but-still-recent past. If you're anything like me, you'll want to keep your tissues handy.

A brilliant and deeply moving exploration of what we would and wouldn't do to protect ourselves and others, and what genuine loving kindness does and doesn't look like. Two strangers in dire life-and-death circumstances face off, the desperate need of one hitting the implacable wall of the other; mediating it all is the the dog Roxie, a terrific character and terrifically effective device that not only charms but packs a wallop when the story gets where it's going. You're a good girl, Roxie. Such a good, good girl.