Recommended by Lisa Dellagiarino Feriend

This is one of those plays that I wish so desperately I could see live. Two scientists have discovered and captured a human who lives underwater. As they perform research to figure out all they can about him, they wrestle with the ethics of what they are doing and their captive's backstory plays out in shadow puppetry. It's a captivating story with some stage images (that tank! the projections! the shadows! the prayer movements!) that I would love to see on a stage one day.

I love a good play about Satan! (I feel like I should rephrase that, but I'm going to press on instead:) What really makes this short "It's a Wonderful Life" parody work so well is all the little details, which are so specific and so funny. I was laughing to myself as I read all the terrible things - past and future - that are Satan's doing. It's loads of fun watching Clarence help Satan get his groove back.

What a great concept, perfectly executed! Ms. Grinch has had enough - there's not room in the Grinch's too-small heart for both her AND his hatred of the Whos. A fun monologue for Christmas or anytime!

This short play is both very entertaining and also a reminder of all the ways our quarantine year was stressful and a struggle: trapped at home with our loved ones, we all started noticing character flaws and questioning why we chose to be with these people (right? it wasn't just me, right?), and artists had to find new ways to make money in a hurry. This play is a good mix of humor and the stress of disconnecting from people you can't actually disconnect from. It also manages to have some great physicality despite being a Zoom play.

This play has been on my list for a while, and I'm so glad I finally reached it. What a beautiful story of loss and love and conflicting emotions entwined together. There were so many wonderful, wise one liners that by the end I wished I had been jotting them down to remember them all. Deceptively simple, this play will leave you with a lot to think about. Just fantastic.

Wow, this play about race and theater and capital-A Art is fantastic. It follows Charles Gilpin as he skyrockets to fame in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, and the rise and fall of both Gilpin's relationship with O'Neill and Gilpin's career. Their fallout hinges on Gilpin's refusal to say one derogatory word (you know the one) which O'Neill peppered throughout the play. I've made my own share of "Don't change a single one of my precious words. They're all there for a reason" speeches, so hearing O'Neill make that argument in this context made me uncomfortable and made me think.

Wow, this play. Vee finds a finger in a box. I have SO MANY QUESTIONS. Luckily, so does Vee, and this whole play delves into the questions and answers surrounding this finger's discovery while jumping back and forth in time in a way that really works well, keeping you engaged and running to catch up. This is a weird one in the best way. It will stick with me.

I was not expecting to love the fact that this play is set in the 1980s as much as I did, but all the tiny 80s details woven into it took me back to my childhood and made me feel super nostalgic while at the same time feeling nervous for these characters and the choices being made in this story of eating disorders, religion, and theft - and boy, is that a strange combination of emotions. But it worked! The characters all felt real and flawed in different ways. I especially enjoyed Tommy's monologues in the car. Great stuff!

This short dark comedy is hilarious. Two parents discuss the bombshell that their son’s teacher has been having an affair with a student, and are a little miffed that the student wasn’t their son, who is, after all, objectively the best looking kid in the class. I love a good twist on expectations and this play delivers just that.

This play is great. Two kids who are confined to the backyard while one's mom and the other's dad "hang out" spy on neighbors, eat forbidden food, and discuss a whole range of topics, from the appropriately juvenile to the surprisingly deep. It is funny and sad and I love that, at the end, what these two kids grow up to be is left for you to puzzle out, just as they've been puzzling things out the whole play long. With dialogue that rings true to children and a neighbor that I adored, this is a terrific play.