Recommended by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend

This short play is poetry! The same person is portrayed at 20, 80, and 1,000, and all these versions of the person are having a conversation with each other - or, rather, talking at each other: not appreciating what each age has to offer, not seeing the good in each age, only the bad. There is so much here that I want to read it through several more times. This play is unique and beautiful. It would be a stand-out for me in an evening of shorts. Plus it made me feel guilty about all the bread I've fed ducks.

I read this one for the title, and it turned out to be a lovely little play! There are some great opportunities for physical comedy, and I really loved the ending. I'm sure Arthur Miller would agree.

A man and a woman meet in a bar during happy hour in this short, and they find that they make each other happy. The dialogue is quick and playful and poignant, and I would love to see what happens to these two when happy hour ends. Glenn Alterman has created a pair of rich, complicated characters in only ten minutes.

This short play inspired by Dickens' A Christmas Carol focuses on the boy at the end who tells Scrooge it's Christmas Day and who Scrooge pays to fetch the prized turkey. He returns home to his impoverished mother and sister, and we see how Scrooge's generosity affects them, and how a little generosity is contagious. The period language is spot on, and I loved seeing this side of the story!

This short play is darling! And so clever! Jewish Liebowitz's new wife is Catholic, so he has a Christmas tree, which he feels a little weird about - and then the tree starts talking to him, which he feels a LOT weird about. A sweet play about an unlikely friendship and recognizing our "forest". Lovely!

This fantastic play flawlessly tackles a Big Question in only five pages and sticks the landing with the perfect twist. Plus there's jokes! I particularly enjoyed the Mamma Mia bit. What a wonderful, wonderful play!

I adore Tom Moran's work, and this short musical co-written with Marty Moran is another smart, hilarious piece! Henry David Thoreau goes to his sister's place for pizza, but she has a gentleman caller on his way, whom she met on Tinder (I LOVE the explanation of what Tinder is.) It's a riot from start to finish, and it ends with the saddest, funniest tableau I've seen (well, read) in a long time. Probably since the last Tom Moran play I read.

Oh my gosh, I fell in love with these girls! This coming of age story about three friends in a Catholic school about to be confirmed captures that stage of life so well: confusion, drifting apart, strong opinions that you just formed but believe you will take to your grave, the fear of being different... It is all here, and woven together with some of the best teenage dialogue you'll ever read. This play flew by, and I was sad to say goodbye to these girls. I want to stay and see what they become!

This monologue is beautiful! It reads like poetry, and you feel for the selkie, both as another part of the natural world that man is treating with disrespect and as a woman who has been torn from her children. It's only two pages, but Donna Latham had me INVESTED - I didn't realize how much so until I breathed a sigh of relief at the ending. When I finished, I went back and reread it, and discovered beautiful bits I'd missed the first time. What a wonderful piece!

Wow, who knew a play about two life-long friends chatting in bathrooms from middle school to adulthood would make me feel so many things?? The snapshots of Amelia and Jac's lives and friendship all fall on or around big American events of the past twenty years, and they keep coming back to issues of safety: When will we be safe again? (We were safe before, right?) It's powerful and genius and there is so much wonderful humor balancing out the heaviness of the real-life events. I don't know how Aly Kantor wove it all together, but holy crap, produce this.