Recommended by Sam Heyman

This is a lovely, heart-tugging short play, a narrative of subtlety and nuance for a talented pair of young actors. The anchor phrase of the play is full of resonance, as life does its best to shake us out and force us away from the ones we love. For anyone who's loved someone who has felt out of reach, for anyone who's loved and lost and yearned for love again, Anamaria Guerzon's "Keep You" rings beautifully, painfully true.

There’s a musical quality to “EUPHORIA”, Emma Goldman-Sherman’s heartbreaking family drama, in which two parents and their child grapple with loss and losing one’s self to addiction. The script is remarkably constructed, with each character alternating between direct address, expressive monologue and soliloquy, and Goldman-Sherman’s characters come right off the page, sometimes painfully so. I appreciate the flexibility of the script to represent different iterations of the central familial relationship. Each version of “EUPHORIA” is poignant, specific and universal — a tragic joy to read.

The classic queer nerd and jock pairing, handled with delicacy and winning warmth by Scott Sickles, delights and gets the heart beating with anticipation in "murmurs." Jason and Les are imbued with subtlety, making them more than just types, each with their own wants and fears. Excellent short piece.

Andy Boyd does an excellent job taking an absurd, inherited premise and grounding it with sophistication and a biting wit. Even based as it is in the facts of history, its message resonates strongly today.

The joy, and gracious excitement that builds in one's heart when one reads through this piece is impeccable. There's plenty to love about Miranda Jonte's writing, and plenty worthy of interpretation for a performer and an audience. "i'll take" is a gorgeous ode, and one worth returning to.

There’s an edge of your seat quality to Joe Swenson’s writing, as tension is built in one direction while the writing builds to a gripping conclusion that is both unexpected and inevitable. In Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell — formerly Sniper — Swenson speaks powerfully and personally to the limits of military camaraderie and unity in an era of distrust and animus. This short play is a gutting reminder of our past, of deep wounds felt even now.

"2 Philosophers 1 Stone" is a treasure of a short play - I love the interplay of verse and stylistic anachronism in this piece, the way the dynamic of these two characters is captured with humor and sophistication by Erin Proctor. Not only that, but what a killer title! Highly recommended.

A tight, “pleasant brain teaser” for mystery lovers and meta-narrative fans alike, Judy Klass’s “Cozy Murder” is both timely and timeless. With a colorful cast of characters and a wry approach to the whodunnit, this play accomplishes a lot in relatively few pages. Whether you have sympathy for the victim, the culprit, neither or both, there’s plenty to latch onto and engage with as you read.

This is a lovely, heartbreaking portrait of mother and daughter, borrowing from mythology to tell a story that is universal and extremely heartfelt. Samantha Marchant tells this story with subtlety and lyrical humanity, bringing these classical archetypes to life in a refreshing, new way.

There's plenty to like about this play by Jacquelyn Floyd-Priskorn, which bounces from the abstract nature of souls and soulmates to dating game pitfalls to twenty-something soliloquy and back again. Though many characters serve largely as companions to Liberty's struggle to find love, the dialogue feels very human and the piece has a lovely theatricality to it. The ending lands excellently, too.