Recommended by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend

This play is so unexpected! It's about a former Secret Service agent struggling with PTSD from the Kennedy assassination, but it's also about his unhappy wife, a sword-swallowing widow, and an effort to lift everybody from the places where they're stuck. I enjoyed the twists and surprises in the story, and I would love to see this play on its feet, with the projections and stage images. Great stuff!

This dark short is fantastic. It uses humor (and a zombie apocalypse!) to portray all the impossible demands and dangers placed on teachers. What a wonderful piece with a perfect ending. Genius!

I love Aly Kantor’s dialogue! This short is a fantastic two-hander about two young women waiting for test results, and their situation feels like the perfect metaphor for the real-life situation many (most?) girls find themselves in, where they’re told they have to be one way, subdued and restrained, but they really want to rage and scream and not conform to the expectations/demands of others. I love this so much.

John Busser's shorts are always a good time. This one takes place in Hell, where Damian's mom is feeling good (and that is bad). Time to exorcise that good spirit out of her! I love the backward nature of Hell and the clever dialogue. This play is fun, smart, and original, and would definitely be a standout in an evening of shorts.

I love this short so much. The premise is a high school group getting together to work on a school project, and there are text versions as well as physical versions of all the students, so you can see the drama happening both in the room and over the phones. The whole play is a rapid-fire ping-pong of dialogue and texts that is so, so clever and well executed. This is one of the most creative pieces I've read in a while, and I'm sure it would be an enormous hit with audiences, especially teenage audiences.

Well this is adorable. There is so much physical comedy in this short piece, as well as visual gags. I think the visual I am most delighted by is that one of these three seniors (who are meant to be played by high schoolers) wears a toupee. I don't know if a toupee on top of a teenager's hair is what's intended, but it's what I pictured in my mind, and I'm into it. Who knew completing a puzzle could be so funny (or so stressful)? This short is a breath of fresh air that would be a crowd pleaser!

A wedding, a blizzard, a haunting, a giant fish painted like a clown… This comedy is a fast-paced, hilarious ride with rapid-fire jokes coming fast and furiously, making the dramatic moments hit that much harder when they arrive. I especially liked the running joke of the bride’s insistence that the ghosts show up when 6 people are in the cabin, and every time they became a group of 6, she would shriek about the ghosts and run out. I saw Theatre of Note’s production of “Clownfish” this weekend, and both the audience and cast were clearly having a wonderful time.

This short is DARLING. I love it. Tim is such a sweet, articulate kid and sees with way more clarity than the adults. I love the reveals and the ghost and the fact that it’s about sports but not about sports, because I’m with Tim: plays about baseball are better than actual baseball. Delightful from start to finish!

I read this short play based on the title, expecting it to be a comedy, and it IS - a very clever one - but it’s also got sadness, unfaithfulness, issues of trust, mental health, and faith… so much in such a short play. I loved every minute and would love a sequel to see what happens to Marcus and Joey next.

This play about a pair of siblings who just buried their mother and are trying to keep their magic shop afloat in a gentrifying neighborhood plays with form and time and has several moments that I would love to see on stage to see how on earth they're pulled off. This play reads like poetry and is full of its own kind of magic.