Recommended by Victoria Z. Daly

This lovely, haunting monologue hits straight to the gut through telling detail, a no-win story of love and grief for a mother physically still on this earth but mentally on her way out. I've had the pleasure of hearing a recording of this piece, and it plays as beautifully as it reads. A great monologue for a woman 40's-50's.

Lermond's resonant imagery brings us immediately into to the mind of a dementia sufferer; and then, with a few short words, we are brought to her daughter's struggle with her own inability to help. It's hard to believe this piece lasts only a minute, as it carries so much so quickly. A beautiful and haunting piece.

This is a 10 that keeps you on your toes -- full of conflict, a down-to-earth (literally!) sibling rivalry, theatrical use of props and a set of turns that will have you gasping. Would love to see this on its feet!

Who, right now, wouldn't want to get out of the house? This adorable family comedy is about some serious stuff: family power dynamics, the yearning for freedom, the power of the imagination (both the characters' and ours.) Probst handles these characters, and the theatrical situation, so playfully that it goes by in what feels like a flash, with some lovely surprises along the way. It also would be a cinch to stage. Highly recommended for your ten-minute or one-act festival.

So much is conveyed between the lines in this lovely duo of overlapping monologues. Each monologue would be gorgeous by itself; but, woven together, they magnify each other. Laid out through precise, poetic detail, the story leads us to feel for a woman whom the whims and injustices of a patriarchal society have left completely isolated. If only we could say these whims and injustices were a thing of the nineteenth-century past.

This play left me breathless. It feels so true and so lived, and the stakes keep getting bigger and bigger. The answer to this no-win situation cannot come from this school, these administrators, or these teachers, who are all forced to make choices that, by design, will fall short. Meantime (as in the larger political world) friendships are ruined, every stakeholder is terrified, and the kids are left forever traumatized. Consider this gem for your short play festival -- any short play festival -- but especially those focused on gun violence and social issues.

Another Beardsley satire that manages to be simultaneously both funny and awful (my favorite combination!) Distinct characters with big personalities and life-and-death wants -- who happen to be dinosaurs -- cannot manage to get their acts together long enough to stave off the inevitable. This play should leave you worried about our own, post-Jurassic era (who will be the dinosaurs, and who, if anyone, the cockroaches?) Consider it for your short play festival centering on on climate change/political satire/or just plain old comedy - it hits all the marks.

So much covered in less than three minutes! Using a lovely economy of dialogue and physicality , Beardsley creates a sweet and saddening metaphor -- not just about our current political times, but about the barriers that keep humans from connecting,

By turns horrifying, violent, funny and moving, HOMESTAR is about a mother who makes a reluctant investigation of her child's hate-crime murder. More fundamentally, it's about that mother coming to terms with her failure to care for the person her child became, because that person was not the child she wanted. In the course of her Las Vegas journey, Nan must confront her own failures to love unconditionally -- not just her murdered transgendered daughter, but also her mentally challenged sister, and, ultimately herself. I dare you to experience her transformation at the end and not weep outright. Highly recommended.

The opening monologue of this wonderful one-act, set in 1940, is worth the price of admission -- a comedic tour de force for the right divaesque actress "of a certain age." All the characters in this play must deal with change, both artistic and personal, and find a way to move their lives on. Weinberg shows exactly how adapting a piece of fiction for the stage (in this case a short story by Edna Ferber) should be done, both honoring the original text and making it wonderfully and hilariously her own.