Recommended by Toby Malone

The beauty of this short, witty piece is that it takes a high-stakes family drama and places it in such a wonderfully evocative setting - an off-brand, knock-off wax museum in front of a lopsided Britney Spears - and plays it straight down the line. There's plenty of heart here, strong instincts, and playwright Cayson Miles resists the urge to tie everything up neatly. Lovely stuff.

A well-crafted, emotional, heartfelt play about making the biggest decision of your life and holding on to hope. The dynamic between Dayton and Cal is heartbreaking as you realize where this is going, and as we watch Cal wrestle with what he knows he must do. A tough yet tender play on a subject no one really ever wants to talk about.

It's such a gift when a playwright offers insight into the inner world of characters, and so often texture can be lost when that context lies solely in stage direction. In the lovely "That Moment When...", Steve Martin offers a simple, elegant, stylistic solution by offering a play filled with words but only a single word of dialogue. The actors would have a blast playing with these spoken stage direction of what could be the start of something beautiful. Great work.

Monica Cross imagines a conflict between the Greek and Roman gods of war in a battle for supremacy, where the old god inevitably falls to the new, but at what cost? My first foray into this exciting idea of battles between classical pantheons: I can't wait to read more!

In this most masculine of conversations, tinges of humanity and sensitivity are allowed to poke out, just for a moment, as two bros try to reminisce their way up to vulnerability. I would love to see how long these two could go before finally deciding to bury the hatchet. A fun short play.

You'd guarantee an audience a rollicking good time as you interrupt Marcel's bathtime, as he ensures that you know that you are really very much inconveniencing him, in a hilarious, zippy manner. This is a strong, interactive piece that subverts our expectations, makes us think, and ever so slightly puts us in the uncomfortable position of knowing that we're going to get called out. Over and over. Great stuff.

"“I’m so OCD” doesn’t even make sense, grammatically."

So says Jess, one of the many vibrant characters that people this sprawling, intimate one-man-show with such diversity and breadth that you can very easily forget it's all to be performed by one actor, which then flips into a longing to see this taken on by someone talented enough do it justice. "I'm so OCD" doesn't make grammatical sense, but OCD doesn't make any other kind of sense in general. Ben, our protagonist, struggles with what he can't explain or quantify, and we join in his quest for knowledge. Masterful.

A piece of theatre brimming with heartache and loss, Mabey skilfully navigates through the temptations to over-tell, and instead allows the history between William and Sister Agatha to coax the details to the surface. Sister Agatha is tough yet loving, a mentor that we all wish we had at some point in our lives. Even though William is at his lowest ebb and doesn't want to admit it, we are sure that with Sister Agatha in his life he is going to be okay.

A riot of a short play that cranks up the drama and the stakes for judging an art contest where the concept of taste and personal preference are brought under scrutiny, only to realize that the people involved with creating the art aren't really all that concerned. A lovely little salve to remind us about how we might just chill out a little bit when expressing our opinions on art. But not in this recommendation! Read on and enjoy.

A taut, tense thriller that bottles nameless figures with untold crimes together in a room with weapons and only one rule: last one standing gets to leave. I really appreciated how Michael Hagins doesn't give in to the temptation to over-explain or resolve the mystery, but lets the situation do the talking. Excellent stuff.