Recommended by Larry Rinkel

Always fun to contemplate the back story between the subject of a work of art and the artist. Here Rachael puts an amusingly modern feminist twist on the Botticelli classic that people stand on long lines to see in Florence's Uffizi Galleries. Did the original model address the original Sandro with this kind of sass? And if you think not, were you there?

A 1-minute play can say a lot in a short amount of time, just like a haiku. In this brief piece for two persons of color which will likely play in under a minute, Greg Lam captures the conflicting hope and futility of political resistance, the contrast between youth and age, and the brutality of the unseen oppressor.

A fast-paced send-up of a Lesbian wedding and the conservative hillbilly grandma and mama trying to disrupt it. While the play is no doubt gay-friendly, the hilarious caricatures and situations give it a wittily farcical edge that is totally unsentimental. The nuttier the characters, the more fun they'll be to play.

Set in the forests of Assam, India, the play takes a droll, farcical look at romantic relations between a pair of humans and a pair of gibbons who speak excellent English including quotations from Shakespeare (except that when the humans finally interact with the monkeys, neither understands each other). Who is observing whom, and can one species trust and communicate with another? Underneath the wit and fun, this romantic comedy (where the monkeys fall in love and the humans break up with each other) poses interesting questions about how much in common we humans have with other species.

A clever small piece about how an Asian teenage boy (and by implication many others of us who may be in our own ways stereotyped) tries to rebel against the clichés others have created about his nature and to find his true self. And yet by denying the cliché of the kung-fu master, young Stan Lee reconceives the idea of the superhero to forge his own identify.

I can only endorse the previous recommendations for this delightfully droll but ultimately elegiac commentary on the nature of creativity and fame. Izumi has no end of fun upending the convention of the author meet-and-greet followed by a questions-and-answers session, or is it a question-and-answer session, or a Q+A (this interchange must be hilarious performed), and then a book-signing. But afterwards the tone changes to something more contemplative and evocative about the nature of art and fame. You will also learn the meaning of the word "amayadori" which has no equivalent in English.

A sweet, often funny parable of 12-year-old Miku, a Japanese-American girl who wants to be a god, her Jewish-Peruvian/American friend Ephraim who stutters and wants to be a champion swimmer, her grandma who makes the world's best onigiri (rice balls), and Shara, a god of war who also happens to be a terrific beautician. Who is God, who are the gods, and what is our relationship to them? The calligraphic layout of the script and its lively dialogue make this play as fun to read as it would undoubtedly be to see in performance.

While it is unclear how many representatives of each species should be included, or if humans should be among them, or if extinct species should be resurrected a la "Jurassic Park," or if a stage can be found to hold them all, or if they would all get along, there is no question that this play serves its intended function of being a very short play for an infinitely large cast. (And this review is longer than the play itself.)

Dahling, you have simply got to read this FABULOUS monologuey thingy and then you have got to explode the costume budget to have it performed! The drugs1 the sex! the booze! the dress, oh my the dress! Cue lights, cue music, and let's get this Roman emperor to shine!!

An enigmatic piece, a kind of parable about the budding young artist who will not do what he is told and is eventually overwhelmed by the results of his creation. There are some production challenges with the sound effects and possibly projections on the stage, but it's a charming short piece I enjoyed reading.