Recommended by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend

These dinosaurs are so poetic! It's easy to tell good from evil in this short - because the evil dinosaur is wearing a very sinister moustache. (And also a flowery lei. Just because you're bad doesn't mean you can't appreciate beauty.) SO MANY fun things happen in this 10 minute fever dream of a play, and there are a slew of opportunities for physical comedy. I want to see this one so badly.

Oooh this one-minute play gets creepier and creepier! Kids saying scary things is the best kind of horror.

I was lucky enough to see Northlight Theatre’s production of this, and it’s a fabulous play. I love how the action is periodically broken as Warhol and the Iranian revolutionary take turns speaking to the audience, and I especially love the message that art cannot exist separately from politics, that everything we do, every choice we make, is either working toward a more just world or complacent with the injustices around us, all over the world. (And that Americans need to remember they’re not the only people on the planet.) It’s wonderful.

Wow, this play is a wild ride! A coyote shows up one night on the fire escape of an apartment building, and it ends up completely changing the lives of two people who live there. This two-hander is so full of magic, so easy to stage, and has a message about our disappearing wild spaces as well. It's so thoroughly theatrical. I adore it.

I was lucky enough to catch ATC Studio's reading of this play. It does a great job showing how we've failed our veterans instead of preaching about how we've failed our veterans. It's also got some great roles for older actors and some fabulous monologues that could stand on their own. Heavy, lovely work.

I read this one for the title (naturally) and it did not disappoint! Janet is feeling restless in her sex life, so she bought the titular book, read it in a day, and is ready for new adventures with Malcolm - who is engrossed in a far less racy book of his own. The back and forth rings very true for two people who have been together for decades, and you can't help but root for Janet and Malcolm to have bold new adventures which lead to their inclusion in Janet's book's sequel. Lots of fun!

"The door was slightly ajar, but mostly it was a door." This short noir spoof is full of dad jokes and (spoken) song lyrics, and it is too much fun. John Pie, PI, follows the clues as he tries to figure out who killed X, Kay's father. Not only is this play a fantastic genre spoof, but the amount of word play it contains makes it feel like it was a joy to create and would be a blast to perform. It doesn't take itself seriously, it's just here to have fun. And it is. So much fun.

"The door was slightly ajar, but mostly it was a door." This short noir spoof is full of dad jokes and (spoken) song lyrics, and it is too much fun. John Pie, PI, follows the clues as he tries to figure out who killed X, Kay's father. Not only is this play a fantastic genre spoof, but the amount of word play it contains makes it feel like it was a joy to create and would be a blast to perform. It doesn't take itself seriously, it's just here to have fun. And it is. So much fun.

Oh wow. This play about a teenage girl struggling after her best friend dies in a school shooting is so, so good. There's plenty of sadness, but there's also humor as well. I love the way the group text is represented on stage, and Emily Hageman absolutely nails teenage voices. This is a wonderful study on grief and grappling with the discovery that sometimes in this world wrong wins.

What I like so much about this piece is the boy who shows up every so often to remind us that this is Paul's version of events, and that we're all the heroes in our own stories, and therefore unreliable narrators. As a mostly one-person play, this would be a fun challenge for an actor - and a fun challenge for an audience, who would be reminded periodically throughout that this may not be exactly how it all happened in real life, forcing the audience to think critically and draw their own conclusions.