Recommended by Toby Malone

Whoa! Daniel Prillaman mashes HP Lovecraft into a bottle setting and sets it to smooth jazz, creating a taut, tense, thrilling short that is never over-explained or didactic. This is a terrific piece for a themed evening of horror shorts, and would be a sound designer's dream project. What a hoot!

An energetic, quippy short that examines the eternal question: how would YOU react if your city was attacked by a giant 20-storey-tall black giraffe? And if Space Ghost remains silent on the matter, is it even REAL? Freewheeling, silly, joyous fun.

This is a breathtaking, deeply layered play that requires its readers and hearers to immerse themselves patiently and let the words wash over. An hour or a day or a lifetime with these three characters, separate but the same, distant but so close. This is a meditation on a life in a style that feels both like a throwback to an experimental time but also feels incredibly urgent and present and vital for today. This is something that will only deepen and expand in production and is destined to be one of the must-reads of this decade. Read it.

A zippy, irreverent look at the way historical figures will be remembered: no matter what else William Henry Harrison did in his life, he's only remembered for the last month of it. As we stand on the precipice of perhaps the most threatening transfer of power in the nation's history, it's nice to have a reminder that the first time this process was tested reinforced the importance of civil transfer. Here's hoping for one next month.

A brilliantly structured, nausea-inducing, hugely important piece about campus culture, perception, and sexual assault. Bublitz uses time and space in a masterful fashion, weaving context into a story we have already decided we understand in the first scene, but which is slowly pieced together to create the whole picture. This should be high on the list for potential productions everywhere, particularly on university campuses.

This is a beautiful, complex, important piece of art that clearly speaks to the moment we're living in right now, where time means everything and nothing, and where humans penned up inside places that were never designed for 24/7 confinement can bend and ever so slightly break. Hayley St. James creates a beautiful set of relationships and limitations, all haloed by the profound presence of the ghostly presence of the alien Starman David Bowie. This is a piece that we will look back on for its importance as a document of now. Beautiful stuff.

Emily McClain achieves so much in this delightful ten-minute play, establishing a believable point of conflict and some fleshed-out characters before bringing in one with a little less flesh but plenty of self-advocacy. The ZVWMG+ turn is beautifully rendered and immediately secured my full admiration for this quippy short play. A great seasonal piece (obviously), and would be a delight in a site-specific location.

A witty, zippy short with a fantastic premise: Leslie's been stood up for a weekend away but she meets Jordan, who works as a professional one-man (budget cuts!) Greek chorus, determined to narrate Leslie's day. This wacky premise leads to a touching meeting of minds as Leslie tries to make sense of what Jordan could possibly represent. A real crowd pleaser of a ten minute piece. Great stuff!

Conor McShane crafts a full, rich, human narrative in his 'Miss Expanding Universe', creating lived-in characters who never over-share and never feel like caricatures. Amber has the typical teenage problems but runs away to stay with her uncle David because there are deeper, more impossible issues at play that she can't speak yet, but we see them bubbling under the surface. David is lost and knows it, but he doesn't wallow in it, he lives it and bleakly stares at the world around him. Amber saves David as David saves Amber but it's never prescriptive. A beautiful, hopeful two-hander. Bravo.

A shattering, impactful body blow delivered with so much succinct care that Rachel Luann Strayer lets the audience do all fo the work with a few deft touches. Impactful, affecting, and shocking. She's set this up as an audition or competition piece, and I can only imagine the incredible impact this piece would have in those environments. Wow.