Recommended by Larry Rinkel

Ms. Goldman-Sherman herself has written that some see this play as pro-choice and some as pro-life. I think it is neither, as that implies a polemical aim I believe is not present in the play. Instead this is a non-judgmental portrait of an impoverished and ill-educated young woman raped twice who attempts a dangerous self-abortion. Goldman-Sherman, going against conventional wisdom about "showing not telling," centers the play around a "speaker" who narrates the basic events like a Greek chorus, contributing to the restrained and elegiac tone.

Bill Triplett’s memorable and memorably titled short play creates an atmosphere of doom and despair in its portrayal of a family confined to their limited Montana existence with little hope for escape or economic improvement. With three scenes ingeniously constructed in reverse time sequence, the play gradually reveals layers of animosity and suffering among its three characters, and is especially successful in its use of props like the stickpin, coffin, and blanket to symbolize their abusive relationships.

I know this touching play well, having directed it for a short-play festival in 2018. The bicycle is the means of transportation that Syrian refugees Esraa and Hana must use to cross from Russia to Norway in 2015. When young Hana can't buy a bike of her own, Esraa gives up her bike and her own dream of freedom while continuing to prostitute herself. But Hana refuses to leave her new friend behind and both ride the same bike to freedom, in effect both saving the other. Ironically, Norway would reverse the bicycle loophole a year later.

Adapted from the version of the Sleeping Beauty story found in Giambattista Basile's "Pentamerone," Ian Thal's fairy tale for radio presents a more ambiguous and violent slant than that you may know from Disney or Tchaikovsky. No Prince Charming here, but a self-serving rapist who forces himself on the lovely sleeping Talia and has two children by her. Using a variety of sound effects and a non-linear telling of the story, Thal skilfully depicts extremes of depravity and innocence. Not for children.

A wonderful play, saturated with the atmosphere of Chasidic Brooklyn. Best friends Shmuel and Zalmy, who drive around in a “Mitzvah Tank” that is like a portable shul, at first sound like a Jewish version of Gogo and Didi in their loquacious repartee. But once Jonathan, a young Catholic man, finds them and wishes to discover his inner Judaism, rifts occur between the two Chasids and they find their friendship tested. The play, which also depicts Jonathan’s girlfriend who rejects her Judaism as a “liability,” asks how to live a frum existence in a world full of secular challenges.

At first Lilith is told to think of her grandpa as a hero. But as she grows older, she comes to recognize the depth of her grandfather's flaws and eventual suicide, as well as her grandmother's inability to hold on to the myth of her husband as an idealized figure. In this sweetly lyric and elegiac play about Lilith’s growth of perception, she decides ultimately to see both grandparents as worthy of admiration and compassion, and not to disparage the grandfather who killed himself out of guilt even though it meant not seeing not seeing his granddaughter grow up.

I've spent enough time in the corporate workplace to know that this fantastical little comedy is only one step beyond what actually happens between bemused and well-meaning employees and their incomprehensibly demanding bosses. A cutely serpentine play that says it all in a tiny space.