Recommended by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend

The TWISTS! This short drama keeps you on your toes the entire time, as you wait for the other shoe to drop, but there are so many more shoes than I was prepared for! A great example of what a ten-minute play can be in the right hands.

Oh my gosh, this beautiful play! It's about love and loss and change and denial and acceptance and so much more, and it feels like poetry. I love the layers to the dialogue and how the play is simultaneously a small play about one singular relationship, and also a giant play about enormous topics like ethics in science, grief, and faith. Impossible Theories of Us deserves all the praise it has already gotten and more!

I love Melanie Coffey's writing. This short play is set in a climate-changed future, and I love how she gives us just enough context clues and exposition as the play goes along for us to figure out the gist of what is happening, both because I hate being spoon-fed, and because when we understand something is bad, sometimes not knowing exactly what it entails is scarier, allowing our imaginations to run wild - and right now our planet is hurtling toward the scariest thing we could dream up. Just lovely work!

Wow this play is great! I love how messy and complicated all of the characters are, as we watch things become more and more tangled. The scenes in prison with Willa gave me big Silence of the Lamb vibes. A wonderful piece about the angels and devils inside us all.

Josh is getting married! He asks the most important people in his life for their blessing - They're all dead, though. This unique premise delivers a short play that is sweet and sad all at once. It takes place in the fall, and it captures that feeling perfectly that I always got every fall when I was younger: Excited nervousness of new beginnings, coupled with sorrow for what was over. So great on so many levels.

I love these mischievous bears! They are on a very strict diet, but their nimble Dickensian child thief fingers enable them to get the money (and phones) needed to order heart-shaped pizza after heart-shaped pizza. This is a fun, silly, family-friendly short that reminds me of the Muppets' brand of humor, where there are jokes for both kids and grown-ups to laugh at.

A seedy, noir-ish Peter Pan taking place after the events of the movie, this play turns familiar characters on their heads and shows us another side to them. I loved learning what happened to the Darling children after their first trip to Neverland. If Martin Scorsese had written Hook, it would probably be something like this.

This comedic short gives us the story behind the Christmas carol, as (good) King Wenceslas and his page, Jackie, recount what happened on the feast of St. Stephen. Jackie's frustration with the king comes through in quips and asides, and King Wenceslas himself is portrayed with great effect as a complex character, a well-intentioned guy whose privilege blinds him to certain things. They're a fun duo to watch. I'd listen to a hundred more of their stories.

I could not adore this more. I truly could not. A series (a herd) of short plays for kids all centered around elephants, these plays are adorable, hilarious, and the kind of bonkers insane creative stuff (a recipe for an elephant! A detective that hunts guilty elephants! A kid hallucinating elephants everywhere!) that falls out of the minds of children when they’re playing. This is a collection of shorts that would be beloved by kids and grownups alike.

What a great play for young audiences with a lesson on acceptance (both of oneself and of others) and some math facts as well. I love that the teacher is seen as an all-knowing, larger than life figure by the kids, which is how teachers are so often seen by their students in elementary school.