Recommended by John Busser

An amazing monologue from the point of view of a hockey "goon", the enforcers of the ice. As we listen to Bugsy, we gain insight into his headspace and his idea that he may not have the skills of the other players, but he has something they don't. An unwavering call to violence and the will to do the time since he's more than happy to do the crime. We also see how this attitude relates to the way organized crime works, with their own goons and similar attitudes. A wonderful monologue for any actor.

Oh man, this was an amazing 10 minute play from Arianna Rose. Perfectly anthropomorphizing the various media we listen to our music on, she crafted an interesting tale of obsolescence and comeback. I LOVED the various ways she captured each "character" flaw, from skipping, to changing tracks (ah, 8-Tracks) to speed ups and slowdowns. My personal favorite was the MP3 attempting to attach to the others because it thought they were emails. Absolutely brilliant!

That was disturbing on so many levels. Gene Kato gives us a dystopian wasteland with characters that are more damaged than their surroundings and sets them against each other. It's no wonder mankind destroyed the world if these are the types of people that inhabit it. Gene brings out all their worst tendencies and we, the audience are fascinated by it. And each character plays so many games against the others, their duplicity is both appalling and so necessary for survival. A truly mesmerizing play.

Creepy and chilling, yet I was fascinated the entire time. Watching Becca and Phillip sort through the events while still negotiating their deal with one another was wonderfully written. Parsing out the details a little at a time kept me on the edge of my seat. Deb Cole certainly knows how to draw out suspense. And the ending, with its final twist of the knife was devastating. Not so much what happened, but Phillips final statement to Becca. Sick AF.

WOW! Talk about intriguing! Mike Byham takes two storylines, an artificial intelligence robot in a suburban home creating havoc and interspersing it with an announcement of intelligent life light years away, only to slowly weave the two stories together in a chilling way. I loved it! Arti's character (and Alexa by extension) provides both laughs and chills as things go slowly wrong. But when Ben shows up and the true reason behind the odd behavior is revealed, things get exciting fast. I can't see an audience NOT enjoying this one. Well done Mike!

There's no such thing as a free lunch and now apparently that applies to hugs too. Okay, the first one's free, but that's how they suck you in, don't they? An interesting parallel to addiction, this short play by Dana Hall shows that everything comes at a price. Are you willing to pay it?

I didn't see this coming at first, but little hints are scattered along the way. Something about this meeting of a group of soldiers seemed more quest-like than training, and with good reason. Mike Byham has created some wonderful characters to explore out fascination with games and role play. Most games are a reflection of real life, even in the most fantastic of premises. But the characters must take the premise seriously in order to maximize the games enjoyment. Poor Manny isn't quite there yet. But he will be.

OH MY GOD! This was hysterical! Chris Lockheardt knows exactly how to build a comedic premise. I laughed out loud numerous times while reading this. Would LOVE to see it staged. And while the line "Tell her what you did." isn't that funny out of context, for me it brought the house down. And the ending was perfect! My favorite thing I've read today. Somebody please stage this again somewhere I'd get to see it.

An experimental piece from Chris Lockheardt that was so intriguing, I went back and read it twice to see how carefully it was constructed. A play like this benefits from performance as the idea is so brilliantly bizarre, a read through doesn't do it proper justice. But once it begins to take shape, you want the participants to succeed. This experiment totally works.

I would love to see this kind of experimental play staged, as it really needs to work not only between the two actors selling it, but between them and the audience who are asked to buy what they're selling. To me, the great challenge of a play like this is all in the delivery. One word can tell us so much, BUT context, nuance, variety and connection are where the story is built, using just these one word building blocks. By the time the monologue happens, we already have a foundation to place it on. Really interesting stuff.