Recommended by Vince Gatton

Steve Martin's Trivial portrays a very restrained, tightly controlled ritual, which, in its very restraint, evokes huge feelings and tenderness. Hollis understands that sometimes the medium is the message -- and knows her intended audience on a heartbreakingly intimate level. Like much of Martin's work, this piece glows with compassion and empathy.

Horror is at its best when its metaphors are working, and Aly Kantor's metaphors are on fire here. Add in her gift for writing relationships, smart characters, backstory, and snappy dialogue, and you get a short play that packs an enormous bang for your horror buck; one that speaks equally to our current anxieties and our age-old-est terrors. Magnificently done.

What a pleasure to meet such likable, witty characters, to enjoy spending time with them...and then have every expectation subverted, reversed, and cold-cocked so thrillingly. Prillaman again proves himself a master of escalating suspense and horror, but also of humanity: as huge as the scope of this story gets, it never loses focus on its living, breathing, suffering, hoping, loving, deeply screwed-up people. IN THE SLUSH is something you rarely see: a pitch black shocker with immense heart.

Oh, what a lovely piece of work this is. In the classic liminal space of a late-night diner, a sleeping figure at another booth becomes the catalyst for a couple's quiet moment of crisis. The secret motivations and histories that get revealed are one (very good) thing; the surprisingly humane and decent treatment of them quite an excellent other. A shining example of small, internal change counting as worthy dramatic stakes, culminating in a truly perfect final moment.

Aly Kantor turns her tremendous gifts for dialogue and relationships onto a pair of adult sisters, just after their mother's funeral...and builds a heart-rending scifi meditation on decay and capitalism and time running out and rapidly dwindling choices, spiked with moments of transcendent beauty. Strongly recommend reading (and producing) this, it packs a wallop.

Prickly, difficult people are a Craig Houk specialty, so it's no surprise to find in Andre and Lou a couple of unforgettable characters with sharp mouths and edges. What is perhaps surprising is the radiator-like warmth that develops between them, hissing and clanking along the way. Underneath Houk's acid and bite lies a kind, humane heart, and in this exquisitely calibrated two-hander, you'll find it - even if the play itself doesn't want you to get all mushy about it, fer Chrissakes.

Into the canon of comedies like Bringing Up Baby and Ball of Fire, wherein chaotic women charmingly collide with fusty, uptight men, you may now add Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend's delightfully bonkers The Hot Tub Play. What those other stories do with madcap farce, Feriend distills down into a deeply uncomfortable, tightly focused, and wildly funny two-hander played in real time, soaking wet. I promise you'll stay happily entertained well after everyone's fingers have gone prune-y.

What happens when a Prufrock parts his hair behind, and dares to eat a peach? This. Wonderfully, movingly, this. Steven Martin’s gloriously expansive, deeply lovable, and gently heart-yanking comedy(ish) celebrates the profound spiritual joy to be found in learning, exploration, & creation — and the doubts, cynicism, and self-recrimination that can threaten to kill it. Martin’s deep curiosity, wit, and clear-eyed sense of humanity shine off every page. Benny V., the mermaids are singing for you.

Quietly gripping from its first moments, Your Undecaying Flames is a horror story that holds you close and whispers. This sibling road trip drama is vast in scope -- it's about gods, demons, life, death, family, culture, time, memory, and more -- but it's also theater at its most intimate: just two siblings, talking. And in doing so, wrestling with grief & illness (mental and otherwise) & secrets & history & the monsters we carry inside us. Chilling, upsetting, and heart-tuggingly beautiful.

Oh my god, the contradictory adjectives one needs to describe this stellar short play: heartbreaking & hilarious, bleak & hopeful, grim & fun, comic & tragic...Daniel Prillaman's bone-deep understanding of the horror genre shines through, as well as his quick wit, romantic heart, and tremendous (if gimlet-eyed) love of humanity.

(Except for Claire. Fuck Claire.)

I'd program this in every shorts festival I could get my hands on.