Recommended by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend

Oh man. Panto stories are so much fun. The evil Reality steals (and edits!) a bunch of classic fairy tales, and Madame Storyteller and her friends have to confront him and set things right. The rewrites were a lot of fun and made some pretty good points (Cinderella DID only just meet the Prince - can that really be love? Following a stranger IS a very bad choice and maybe Alice should forget about that rabbit. The Genie DOES deserve benefits from their employer, etc.) This is some great fun, with songs and a happy ending to boot!

Oh my gosh. It's hard meeting your partner's family for the first time, and the Bartlebaums don't make it any easier - but they think they are (the detail of everybody calling Dane "The Great Dane" was fantastic), and that's what's so delightful about this short play. It's a comedy about family togetherness (and oversharing) at the holidays which descends into calculated insanity. The stage direction "It is somehow sweet and weird at the same time" is the perfect tagline for the play. I love it.

This short is a lot of fun. In particular, I like that the audience chooses the winner, so the play could end three possible ways (I'm rooting for Mario - A plumber AND a doctor? That's a good person to have around.) I also really enjoyed the commercials, which were very both very silly and very clever. This play would be both easy to stage and thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who grew up playing Nintendo games.

I love this short play. It's hard to write plays about death and grief without them feeling overwrought, but this piece is perfect. Little details get dropped all along the way which pay off emotionally in the end. I saw this performed with Playground-Chicago over Zoom, and I would love to see it again live and get to feel the audience reacting to it. It packs a big punch in only ten minutes.

Oh my gosh. This one-minute comedy is fantastic. It might be my favorite one-minute play ever.

This short piece is VERY satisfying: An internet troll suffers consequences for his actions. What a concept! This dark comedy is SO sharp and utterly original. I loved every twist and had no idea how it was all going to wrap up in only ten minutes. Ann Marie is doing the Lord’s work. Bless the Internet God. FYAD.

The premise of this play - that some hostages and their captors gather for a reunion in the cabin where it happened a year later - is so ripe for dark comedy, and there's lots of it here, but there's also serious topics woven in, like white supremacy, domestic terrorism, and who gets to belong. I enjoyed the Go Fish game in particular and watching alliances shift and flop over the course of the play.

Well this is delightful. Six short plays based on animals from the Bible, and they are all too much fun. It's hard to pick a favorite, but I think mine might be "The Great Fish & Jonah" - but the fly who thinks Baby Jesus's poop is the best thing he's ever tasted is pretty fantastic too, and the giraffes on the Ark are surprisingly heartbreaking, and the snake's monologue flips the Adam & Eve story on its head so well, and Noah's sons grumbling as they fill the Ark with animals... it's very hard to pick. Read them all.

This play captures so perfectly that in-between space between girlhood and adulthood where you're trying to grow up, thinking that you ARE pretty grown up, but then at the same time, you're not. I was hooked from the character descriptions (WINDY: never switched from pads to tampons) and loved watching this alternatingly funny and uncomfortable story play out.

This short is tons of fun. Two incompatible TV personalities are forced to host a live children's show together when the regular hosts can't make it, and all quickly descends into chaos in the best way. I loved their asides during the story hour and their rewrites to the story itself. What a fun piece!