Recommended by John Busser

I'm going to guess not many of you saw where that was going. I mean, you might THINK you know, but you can't REALLY know. Unless you're psychic. Which nobody is... Or are they? Greg Mandryk gives us a fun little office comedy with a twist or two that would be perfect for a night of short plays.

Absolutely one of my favorite pieces from Greg. I've seen a reading and a full production of this piece but it needs to be seen everywhere. Like a bad sci-fi movie from the 50's, Greg hits all the perfect tropes that endear us to them. The stupid names, the insane plot and best of all for theater ladies, a scarcity of men. This one is hilarious.

The end of the world couldn't come fast enough if it was this absurd. Doomsday cults shouldn't have the sway that they do in the real world, and yet they exist. Greg Mandryk makes the crazy clear, but there is also a sweetness to those characters that embrace the weird. A mix of social satire and pure goofiness makes this script a winner.

This needs to be produced on the stage if only for INGENUE DESIREE's scene in front of the camera. Even reading Scott Sickles wonderful typing of the dialogue (and I mean every elongation of a word, every over-emphasized word, every stress on the wrong syllable, it's PEeerFecT!!) Sickles captures the absurdity of those TCM bio docs in such an on-target fashion, it's hard NOT to laugh at all the zingers.

I get a real Hammer Films/Invasion of the Body Snatchers/Tales From The Crypt vibe from this, and I'm hooked. Rachel Feeny-Williams has created the perfect little horror story that unfolds slowly until that great reveal near the end. Perfect for a Collection of horror plays or on it's own, this would be so fun to see produced.

The "What If?" in storytelling is so compelling. Choices made can't be undone, but maybe a chance encounter will allow one to indulge in looking back and trying a redo.... or not. Most of us may have been faced with our own moment to try again. The characters here react one way. How would you?

And that last line is explosive in its implications for furthering the story. Intriguing stuff.

I certainly didn't see where this headed. A fun little misdirect from Dana Jaffe that gets the audience feeling for one victim, then having not one, but two major turns in plot that'll keep them guessing. Fun stuff.

I loved this play. It's sci-fi, it's got a strange concept I can totally buy into, and two characters that show just how hard it is to adhere to rules of contact and communication. It would be easy for the characters to screw up what they are attempting, and while I can't speak for anyone else, I found myself silently rooting for Gulati to succeed. You will too.

I think this is one of the most satisfying twist endings I've ever read. The build up, the horror that pervades throughout and the ENORMOUS sense of relief when the protagonist finds out what is going on had me grinning from ear to ear. I loved this piece, but only because it had me so completely bamboozled. And considering what the ending was, it was sooooooo appropriate as the answer. I would give it away. It's too perfect an ending.

Scott Sickles manages to make his characters both ones you love to see and love to hate. Not all of them, but the right ones. When one manipulative sonofabitch gets his comeuppance, you want to cheer the delicious way it happens. I do feel sorry for one character though: Harvey, who has to utter not one, but two loooooong Latin phrases, surely a torture in itself. Luckily, he makes it through unscathed. Spooky, yet fun as hell.