Recommended by Vince Gatton

Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn hits a bullseye here with another of her absurdist/allegorical short pieces. (See also JUST GO RIGHT THROUGH.) A gut-punch of a metaphor, made all the more effective by the gentle frankness of its delivery. Packs a wallop.

Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn has a gift for allegorical short plays with deceptively simple set-ups that deliver big ideas and profound emotional impact. (See also DELETE.) Here, the liminal waiting-room space, odd characters, and surreal goings-on are deliciously fun, loaded with humor and a satisfying frisson of foreboding and dread; by the time it arrives at its lovely conclusion, its brief running time has been quietly filled up with big helpings of humanity, compassion, and care. Inventive, imaginative, and wise, this one is.

I love seeing how playwrights handle a horror-movie premise onstage, and this horror-movie-adjacent, Twilight Zone-esque short delivers beautifully: there’s small-town folksiness tinged with dread, blood, screaming, doubt, suspicion, and twists that twist again, sticking an unexpected landing. Dark? Sure. Grim? Yeah. Weirdly humane and even touching? Perhaps. Your mileage may vary, but by the time it was over I was nodding and thinking that scary-yet-sentimental Rod Serling would surely approve.

Take-no-prisoners Badass and unassuming Sadsack meet in a bar — and neither will be the same again. What makes this “two strangers in a fateful chance meeting” play stand out is the rich, vivid color with which both are painted, their oil-and-water vibes operating in delicious counterpoint. An unexpectedly joyful play about deeply unhappy people, with a sweet and salty mix that’s entirely satisfying.

A premise that could just as easily operate on a breezy, sitcom level accumulates weight and consequence in DC Cathro's sure hands. His sparkly way with dialogue certainly lends itself (at least initially) to a more comedic kind of reading; but as this marital spat over a seemingly minor grievance reveals deeper fissures, big themes emerge about boundaries, compromise, sacrifice, and loss of self. Cathro has a gift for baiting his hook with a shiny setup and then reeling you in to contemplate something harder and more ineffable by story's end. Tight and unexpectedly haunting.

A knockout of a solo piece and a devastatingly effective piece of writing. Loewenstern’s construction here is cunning, using repetition to build and sustain tension, and focusing tightly on a series of micro-moments that understatedly reveal huge depths of feeling and yield enormous emotional payoff. An insightful, powerful gut punch.

I say this with love: Daniel Prillaman is broken inside. But lucky us, we reap the benefits of his derangement when it produces insanely funny, dark, horrific, and weirdly romantic shocks like this one. Not for the faint of heart, but an absolute gift for anyone who loves a good blood-soaked bark-laugh, followed by a tender “Awwwww!”

An utterly charming and ultimately gut-punching portrait of a Filipino-American lola and her grandson. There's so much going on here as these witty, smart characters navigate a kitchen together: immigration, assimilation, family dynamics...plus hate crimes and other threats specific to our era. A salty, sassy short piece that earns every bit of its emotional payoff.

As a Jeopardy fan and one-time contestant (aka Jeopardy loser) during the Alex Trebek years, I am here for any and all Jeopardy-related content. (My urge to weigh in on their discussion of the show's hosts was STRONG, y'all). What makes this a terrific play, though, for both Jeopardy fans and not, is that underneath the banter it isn't really about Jeopardy at all. Bravo to Austin Hendricks for his sublime subtlety, for leaving the unstated unstated. A quiet, compassionate portrait of the complexity of navigating change, even (if not especially) where there's great love.

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.