Recommended by Ricardo Soltero-Brown

  • McIntosh
    13 Jun. 2018
    A brief piece focused on and for actors who know how to control their own narrative, who take Stanislavski's notion of "No Small Parts, Only Small Actors" a little too seriously, who believe in creating a character-bio a bit too much, or get lost in Hollywood mythos or fan-fiction...or just maybe know how to con their way up the ladder. This would easily work in any short comedy festival, or one themed around acting, theatre-making, movie-making, or the countless urban legends surrounding the classic film version of 'The Wizard of Oz'.
  • COME
    11 Jun. 2018
    Disturbingly effective horror short about a sex tape that should never have been and children who should have had nothing to do with it; the dread sets in immediately. The language (composed of a sort of discordant harmony and brutal yet stunningly generational honesty) begins the devastating tale and the tone encompasses us all like a cloud. Or mist. Or fog. Or smoke. Or smog. There is a full world delineated here with very few strokes on the canvas by Cassidy. There is an economy both impressive and terrifying. These characters strike directly into the nerves. Lights and diapers on.
  • Myrtis
    11 Jun. 2018
    This lovely reflection utilizing the past's relationship to the present finds two scientists philosophizing on death's relationship to the living. The dialogue's progression is both lofty and grounded, mesmerizing and humbling. Burbano has a remarkable exchange here between two women at work.
  • Something Profound
    11 Jun. 2018
    The atmosphere a playwright feels in their heart/head is seldom without hard work achieved in the room, that is to say, the theatre. It's like constructing a greenhouse then claiming you've wielded Mother Nature. Hageman makes a jovial sports-like piece out of the searching for that component so elusive, so ethereal in 'Something Profound', while skewering gender tropes; it's both testament and homage to theatre-making. Her use of the technology available is challenging and appreciated. This meta-work of comedic half-fiction is more than worth accomplishing, as much for us as for them. Both of whom are in the play.
  • Homo for Christmas
    10 Jun. 2018
    Probably the finest, cleverest, most inspired aspects of Bavoso's Christmas-set comedy are the complications that are never alleviated, only exacerbated. Grandma could prove a goldmine. The grand miscommunications, both deliberate and genuine, are ablaze and absolutely what set this apart from the other plays in its genre. Ready for the holidays or festivals, this family malfunction will absolutely work anywhere, anytime.
  • A Good Catch
    10 Jun. 2018
    An age-old hunt is given a bait-and-switch by Jeanette Farr. The classic dynamic initially yields puns, innuendos, and euphemisms before using satire, militant and charging, to take Man down a peg and put him in his place, merciless and unconcerned if he ever actually learns what that is. Which isn't necessarily ever the aim of the gods. Very funny.
  • THE BIGNESS OF IT ALL
    10 Jun. 2018
    There's a profoundness to this play that is so unsettling. The simplicity of it all. The straightforwardness of it all. The matter of fact-ness of it all. How the subject of a small physical movement can mean something so large that it has for so long been, in a way, unapproachable. However, it has been approached, faced, ignored, warded off, acknowledged, dismissed, etc, etc, etc, and for some reason, it continues to perplex some and vex the rest. This is a deep, deep play from Stephanie Alison Walker about empathy and ignorance and so much more. Just pick an angle.
  • Autophobia: noun. a fear of one’s self (a monologue)
    10 Jun. 2018
    Let the actor who tackles this rehearse, rehearse, and immerse. Let the set be as close as possible to what Partain describes. The outcome would be hypnotic, a theatrically induced tachycardia. Beautiful and beguiling, terrifying and tragic. Partain's investigation into the limits of the self and of self-awareness here would make for a compelling and reflective evening on its own or as a standout segment in an evening of her work.
  • K-CUP SALES SPECIALIST: A MONOLOGUE
    10 Jun. 2018
    Emergencies are transpiring all the time, it would seem, especially now - perhaps because we are all so connected through modern technology. The weight of this leaves us with no wondering as to why the CSR reacts the way she does to an Amber Alert in this gem of an outburst from Wyndham's astonishing canon. Emergency has become both a daily activity and personalized trial befalling various communities and individuals, there is a kind of implosion required before a move into action may occur. That cataclysm is remarkably dramatized here and may serve as the precursor to an audience's efforts.
  • The Presidency of William Henry Harrison in Real Time: A 10 Minute Play
    10 Jun. 2018
    Hayet is really such a wonderful, clever, and enlightened comic writer. Here he takes a very real circumstance and gives a nearly-forgotten figure of U.S. history an opportunity to fight for his legacy, only to be thwarted by a millennial simply and understandably doing her job. What the employee hears is so incredibly to-the-point that everyone's misbehavior is ingeniously organic, impulsive, and hilariously tragic - all common, recurring qualities in the works of Steven Hayet.

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