Recommended by Hayley St. James

For years I’ve wanted a riff on Goldilocks and the Three Bears that gives us a new perspective on the story. Fortunately for us, Matthew Weaver has written the tightest, funniest exploration of the fairy tale you’re ever likely to see or read! A terrific ten-minute What If? that definitely bears checking out.

Metatheatre at its fucking zenith, in one perfect minute. If you hate Mamet or love Mamet, this piece is for you.

Another gloriously wild exercise in surrealism from Daniel Prillaman. What should be a pretty standard trip to a furniture store ends up destroying all conventions of logic, storytelling, and metatheatre. Unforgettably weird. I loved it.

I watched the Scantic River reading of this play. Camila and Ian’s reckoning with Camila’s family’s monster-hunting past is spooky, grimly humored, and poignant. Bultrowicz has crafted a compelling play full of mystery that smartly jumps backwards in time and double-casts its actors to add new layers to the story, and cleverly features mentions of mythical creatures and cryptids from all over the world.

A pitch perfect ten-minute parody of George Orwell’s dystopian novel and a gleeful satire of the omnipresence of Taylor Swift in our lives. Every reference and joke left me giggling. (And wildly enough, this play captured my experience listening to Folklore and Evermore in 2020 after years of resisting the call of the Swifties!)

A marvelously theatrical travelogue and its own kind of immersive theatre, as we literally follow two Roman legionaries from the turn of the first millenium around their old haunts in what is now London. Fun banter and a truly unique premise make this piece truly stand out; when I finally get to go to England someday I will definitely want to walk in Marcus and Sextus’ sandals.

A twisty timey-wimey delight in ten minutes, with a kickass gunslinging grad student heroine and a talking cat who is her sidekick as well as her dissertation advisor. How can you not love this play?

If “Almost, Maine” relocated to the coast for the summer and was visited by David Lynch. A moody, bitter, and haunting series of scenes that leave you lusting to know more while sitting contentedly with the odd but rewarding journey you’ve taken in the short time you’ve spent with the characters.

A deeply imaginative throwback to a simpler time. This charming and magical homage to the classic Winsor McCay comic strip, is a delightful and entertaining TYA play for anyone to read - or ideally see! Fabulous possibilities abound for designers and creatives.

This short musical imagines the literal clash between two iconic corporate mascots after a certain theme park bans the sale of a certain fast food chain on its premises, in wickedly entertaining fashion. A darkly nostalgic fever dream in fifteen rollicking minutes!