Recommended by Jillian Blevins

Writing can be a lonely business. What if the characters we conjure in our work could see us, and the love we put into their stories could be reciprocated? Sam Heyman demonstrates effective restraint, suggesting a rich and specific world-behind-our-world, but leaving readers to decide both what it means, and what happens to its emissary when he breaks the rules by making himself known. PORTNOY ventures into the absurd and metatheatrical in ways equally disquieting and comforting.

Miranda Jonte’s meditation on grief and healing achieves so much in its few pages. Her protagonist’s raw and poetic stream of consciousness instantly draws us into her longing, her pain, and her enduring love for her deceased husband, who appears to reminisce about their passion for charcuterie, and perhaps, to guide her towards a new future.

Jonte’s evocative use of language and structure renders SMORGASBORD part diary, part elegy, and completely engrossing. Spare, melancholic, and lovely.

How can one ten minute play contain art-world satire, robots, a smarmy tech bro, an identity crisis, laugh-out-loud comedy, a brutal beating and a William Gibsonesque social sci fi premise? IGNYTLOFM manages it all, with a signature Prillaman twist. A satisfying read for artists of all kinds anxious and infuriated at the prospect of creativity being supplanted by an algorithm; Prillaman’s incomparable, brilliantly weird works are evidence that it cannot.

JACOB AND EBENEZER’s titular characters are men building a barricade of wealth to protect them from a threatening world. The tragedy of Richter’s melancholy prequel is how they build a wall between each other, alternately attempting to break through and holding it in place, each longing for comfort while denying it to the other.

Richter’s insightful and empathetic point of view renders his characters more three-dimensional than their Dickensian counterparts, while remaining squarely in the world of A Christmas Carol. I don’t think I’ll ever see Scrooge the same way again.

TODA slyly riffs on the antisemitic trope of blood libel by imagining a meeting between two misunderstood creatures—a vampire and a Jew. No, they don’t walk into a bar, but a Chabad house, where the monster fittingly receives sanctuary (and education).

All Jews know how it feels to be hunted, today and always. The compassion of TODA’s rabbi reveals a strange affinity with the despised monster, and his sense of responsibility for him is Tikkun Olam in action. In ten pages, Horowitz amuses, provokes, and terrifies—not unlike a good Torah parsha. Mazel.

One of the few silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic is the way it inspired theatre artists to explore form and reimagine what makes a play. SNOW WHITE
AND ROSE RED is a compelling argument for such experimentation to continue beyond the era of Zoom theatre.

Emily McClain reshapes the lesser-known, original Snow White fairy tale of two sisters and a bear-prince into a scathing critique of modern dating. Through FaceTime and text threads, we see the distressing juxtaposition of how one man treats a woman he’s decided is “good”, and another who he’s decided is “bad.”

Where do faith and optimism end, and delusion and recklessness begin? MBMA’s lovers leap over “meet cute” and land squarely in “meet deranged”—and what a delight it is. Aly Kantor just might be the master of twisted romantic comedy.

HERO/DOGBERRY offers all the charms of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with a shrewdly feminist edge. This companion piece to Much Ado About Nothing reimagines Hero as a protagonist with agency, wit, and fortitude rivaling heroines like Viola and Rosalind. It also addresses Claudio’s maddening lack of accountability in Shakespeare’s play through a climactic scene that’s both satisfying and heart-rending.

Monica Cross deploys an impressive mastery of verse in HERO/DOGBERRY; more than once, I had to check the source material to be sure whether a line was hers or Shakespeare’s.

So many of us underestimate children, and in doing so, we often get their voices wrong. However, Monica Cross, in her play, gets the experience of childhood exactly right: the intensity of feeling, the rapidly expanding minds, and the powerful desire to make sense of ourselves and our world.

Sickles’ “fun meditation”—an apt descriptor for this powerful two-hander—begins with a clever twist on the “game of chess with Death” trope. The game appears at first as playful, philosophical banter, but, like the play itself, the heartfelt vulnerability beneath newly-dead Michael’s intellectual exterior gradually reveals itself. Without offering easy answers or cloying platitudes, WOTR’s moving ending left me feeling comforted and hopeful in the face of our unknowable end.

Written to be played by actors of any age, race, gender or ability, Sickles’ characters are at once universal and specific. A perfect 10-minute play.