Recommended by Larry Rinkel

Though this touching, elegiac play gains resonance the more one knows about Emily Dickinson, everyone can grasp the idea of a great, original genius working reclusively with little hope of recognition. O'Grady dramatizes how the apparently illiterate maid Maggie (unlike Emily's more literal-minded sister Lavinia) grasps the ambivalence between Emily's overt instruction to have her poems burned and her deeper desire to have them sent out like letters to an understanding world. Maggie's boyfriend Johnny adds a sympathetic note, but the focus is on the fine roles for the three women.

What people will do to get a job these days. And a data entry position in accounts receivable at that. I mean, I could see the interviewer's outrageous and totally illegal tactics if the guy was going for a job in payables, but receivables? After you've enjoyed the "interview," there's the twist at the end that makes the whole thing funnier, and I daresay more believable.

In Julie Zaffarano's hot little play, the two young men are at first wildly infatuated with each other's sexual beauty, but then Coke freaks out at a slight physical imperfection in Denny. Are looks all that matter to gay guys? Farcical mishaps ensue involving a glove and a scarf as Denny tries to hide his "rash," but to both boys' surprise, they get past their initial fears to realize a common love for the great American prophet of independence and unconventionality. "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

In this sweet and gentle family drama, precocious teenager Fox turns up at the home of gay dad Paul who never knew his son existed. Complications ensue as to who will bring the boy up, with everyone from Paul's boyfriend Adam to his parents Jim and Dorothy to Fox's mother Julie wanting their say. And Fox wants his say too. There are bumps along the road, but eventually a resolution is achieved on all sides in this pleasingly written play, which makes subtle commentary on what it means to be married, a parent, and a teenager today.

An entertaining tasting menu of appetizing 2-handers, all centered around food (cooking show, yogurt shop, dinner for the big date, food court samples at the mall, and peanut allergies). Quinn Hernandez knows his food, and you might even want to cook the delectably named Martha Marmalade's chicken recipes. There are five 2-character vignettes here that are in most respects independent of each other, but the play most thoroughly develops the story of superficially perky but frustrated cooking host Martha, a wacky Julia Child for our times who is upstaged by her unnamed guest assistant. Bon appetit!

You will enjoy how Bill Triplett gradually screws up the pace and tension in this exciting little short, with passenger Winston taking a "surreal Kafkaesque journey" in the company of two eccentric fellow-travelers and not knowing where his train is heading or even in what decade. The allusion to Kafka is explicit (there's your K), but even more this piece reminds me of a miniature Twilight Zone episode. Very stageworthy as Rachael Carnes notes in her review.

Happy to add my own recommendation to the many already. Taking a seemingly unpromising prop as a catalyst for communication, Emily creates a powerful arc where the couple's loss but ultimately their love for each other is revealed only as the play goes forward.

Using rain as a central metaphor, the three short scenes of Hernandez's play seem to be told in reverse time-sequence: a night of incredible passion, a somewhat awkward first date, and a chance encounter on a bus. A beautiful small romantic play for the two women, one in which the author satisfies the reader with his compelling stage directions as much as the potential audience sitting in the theater.

Inexorably powerful and gripping. In the wake of Hurricane Maria and the hell on earth that is now Puerto Rico, cousins Mariel and Toño are locked in a stalemate where she tries to prevent him from committing mass murder to call attention to the neglected island's suffering. They resolve it by playing a kids' game with the result that Toño kills himself, and Mariel is left to wipe up his blood with the "paper towels" that were Donald Trump's horrifically insufficient response to the crisis.

I so love plays that remind me of how much I dislike Christmas. Watch how Rachael structures this, with short speeches at the start as Alex tries to cheer Sam up, then Sam's story about how his/her dog was put down at Xmas (are there really any vets open that day?), leading to Alex's big speech when we find he/she has endured even more Xmas suffering than Sam. And last Mariah Carey: "the song of the devil oozing up from the eternal underworld to remind me of my pain." The more the characters suffer, the funnier the play.