Recommended by Larry Rinkel

Sci-fi fantasy set in the Antarctic, 2046, when climate change is wreaking havoc with the planet, a favored few will escape to Mars, and millions of desperate unseen people are left behind to murder each other with guns. A love story emerges between the now grown-up two boys from Scott Sickles's "Marianas Trench," in the thrilling Part Two of his Second World trilogy. "You know the planet’s gone to hell when an overabundance of penguins is a harbinger of the apocalypse." But there are signs of hope (at least on the political front) at the end. Bring on Part Three!

While this witty and sharply satirical short play may have most resonance for the playwriting community, it speaks to issues that affect all of us - the older white man's suspicion of preferential treatment towards women and people of color, and the black woman's conviction that her work has won her a major award based solely on merit. Superbly acted at Samuel French in August 2019 (the same performance Rachael Carnes saw below), it most definitely proved - a winner.

This charming short dialogue-free boy-girl fantasy, half-play and half-short story, with its background tale of medieval romance (and where the Princess, not the Knight, slays the terrible Dragon), demonstrates perfectly my belief that plays can be as satisfying to read as to see performed on stage. This may be my favorite from all Emily Hageman's short works, and if I were directing, I would print the script complete in the program — as required reading.

Make sure you hear (at least in your mind) the classic Cole Porter song from which the play takes its title. Though read in isolation some of the relationships appear ambiguous (who's Fred?), there can be no doubt about the calculating amoral hustler Ólafur, who is sure to find someone to service him for the night. Bascom is tempted but has some sense of decency, knowing that "though your lips are tempting, they're the wrong lips." A disquieting but nicely formed miniature from Scott Sickles.

I saw this at Nylon Fusion in New York in 2019 and the audience was in hysterics. Once again Rachael has produced one of those Carnesian Rachaelish absurdist pieces she has so readily at her command.

Set in a divided red-blue America, Sickles's exciting play traces the evolution of a pen-pal friendship between two precocious and lonely pre-adolescents. Even the most innocent sentences in their letters are (hilariously but also chillingly) redacted, as nerdish Teddy suffers from relentless bullying while Anzor's Chechen (and formerly Muslim) family is in true danger living in fundamentalist Christian Arkansas. The play asks what it means to be an American when we are all immigrants and even a kid with an Italian last name is really Korean. I was fortunate to attend a superb staged reading in NYC, July 2019.

What a lovely idea. With a few significant exceptions, the (recited) stage directions are the play, as the two male students both speak and perform the actions described to indicate their mutual instant infatuation. Has anyone else done anything like this before? Not that I know.

A delectable porcine soufflé, complete with Judge Judy (or is it Judge and Jury) references plus plays on the old who's on first jokes as well as its share of penis (man) puns. Salant's voice doesn't falter for a moment; it's one of the funniest little ten-minute farces I've encountered.

Hee. If you can't pie somebody else in the face, pie yourself. Steven should just continue writing 1-minute plays; if he gets to 100, he'll have a full-length.

A delightful little play that in a single minute plays several unexpected twists on audience expectations, none of which I'll analyze because that would spoil the fun.