Recommended by Alice Josephs

A wry moment between father and excluded High School teen son in a brief but recognisable conversation. With a garage setting, a neat final reversal gives a laugh-out-loud ending. Simple but not simplistic, this situation has appeal to a wide age range with its affectionate glimpse of family relations.

A groundbreaking 1950s’ study on homosexuality in McCarthyite America provides framework and motivation for the imagined accidental meeting between two participants. This original premise inspired by a true story is skilfully brought to life through the reactions of two men, one ebullient and the other in self denial, with a third character unseen, the woman running the study. This is a compelling, refreshing piece conveying the impact of an oppressive era through a tense encounter, yet still mining the humour giving two actors tremendous scope to convey a personal and societal turning point...

Creating a superb role for an older actress, Burbano gets under the skin of silent film star Marie Dressler in this clear sighted monologue as she faces up to a fatal blow even in the midst of her success. Defying the norms, she refuses to live up - or rather down - to movie star stereotype, secure in her unique comic abilities, giving due credit to others. With an unforced, earthy delivery she encompasses her backstory with candour, humour and a truly democratic appreciation of her own art and the paying customers who made her a star.

In a few brief pages, Ross brings us into a family’s heart using texts to construct a still dramatically viable piece. This is an expertly paced drama, believable and gripping in its ordinary to and fro of messages including a child with special needs where texts reach emotional intensity with an expression of love. The rhythms of the mundane such as the freeway, work routine in addition to that of texts all serve to bring us towards a visceral destructive ripping apart of family life. Simple and superbly crafted where we feel as well as see lives destroyed.

Came to this knowing nothing about baseball (except for one named player) or, for that matter, statistics. This felt like a scene from a comedy drama with three well differentiated characters and a finger on the pulse of modern physical sport invaded or bolstered by statistical modelling, according to your viewpoint. Kay gives enough to make us feel we are in the room where it happens, with a shifting kinship to the veteran coach, struggling but interested enough to follow the rationale and wheeling and dealing until a sudden finale ‘end of match’ twist. Intriguing and different.

A modern life brief encounter where relative economic need, interracial relationships and masculinity collide. Set on a subway train with crackly guard announcements, the approach of a 21st century beggar separates and then draws together a couple. Bringing an unexpected spirituality with the rhythm of his needs, his personal economy of homelessness is opposed to the implied seemingly affluent but maxed-out-in-loans’ world of the couple, with the man dreaming of a lottery win. An absorbing and pitch perfect piece.

A fresh take on a familiar subject now, the child of a sperm donor searching for her father. Both father and daughter have been ambushed by the discovery but it is the progenitor who seems more of a child, despite the vicissitudes of his own life, until a single heartfelt comment finally disarms him and changes everything in a coup de théâtre, heightened by the Zoom framework.

Two brothers face the future without their parents after their widower father dies. Yet an unexpected find gives them a moment of hope, then threatens their relationship in the next moment but finally bonds them for a lifetime. A gentle but piercing duologue where the audience goes on a journey with the siblings as they come to terms with loss in more ways than one.

Taking the movie and TV thriller trope of the world weary veteran worker and his younger, more eager cohort, McCants deftly subverts the genre in 10 short minutes, destabilising society’s most cherished beliefs and bringing a full scale takeover to visceral life. Clever, funny and disturbing with a cast of thousands seen through the security camera eye of two tower block security guards, this would make a riveting stage piece or short film.

Reality TV may lend itself to satire, but there is an unflinching truth in the issues Lin touches on in Haus Vvives: plastic surgery, marriage, female role reversal mafia-style reaction to real or imagined slights, tabloid publishing as a branch of the divorce court ‘prosecution’ case, crime, law enforcement and the invoking of religion. Movie- and TV-made America, and often elsewhere in the world, reflected back on itself in our beyond satire reality and succinctly summed up in this ultra clever, searing piece.