Recommended by Larry Rinkel

  • Superstar
    23 Oct. 2018
    Everett Robert's compelling take on the date rape issue, "Superstar" leaves open the question of whether a rape actually took place as both the boy and girl passionately insist on their innocence and how the other ruined his or her life. While it may be tempting according to one's prior assumptions to take sides, the success of the play for me is how it presents a believable case for each of the two characters.
  • Time
    22 Oct. 2018
    This exciting short play (for 5-100 actors) defies all conventional ideas of staging and the practical. I'd have no idea how to stage or direct it. Still, it deserves to be known and the author encouraged as a genuinely original and compelling voice. Images of violence, blindness, amputation, and sex permeate the piece, with an author who is obviously enjoying the pleasure of surreal and grotesque metaphor-making. I want to read more of his work.
  • UNDERFUR (co-written with Hugh Brinkley)
    22 Oct. 2018
    Every mom should write plays with her young son. I can't tell which family member is responsible for what in this adorable short, but how many times will you encounter a British raccoon like Chauncey who's been dumped by his girlfriend Cheryl but learns his real friend is his emotional companion person? Chauncey may not be the most sanitary member of the animal kingdom, but at least he washes his pretzels. Do you?
  • land of no mercy
    19 Oct. 2018
    "New York is so confusing." Rae Binstock's quatrilingual, dual time-frame "drama américana (en zvey aktn)" subtly depicts the marital/relationship struggles, employment difficulties, and cultural clashes of Lower East Siders struggling to assimilate and speaking Yiddish, Chinese, and Spanish (supertitles optional) as well as English, both today and 100 years ago. Reminiscent of Stoppard's approach in "Arcadia," Binstock sets various scenes simultaneously in the present and past, suggesting both parallels and contrasts. Among my favorite parts are when Jewish Yetta and Chinese Li communicate haltingly, speaking their own languages and writing in limited English about Li's sick little boy.
  • Radio Galaxy
    19 Oct. 2018
    People from India are not often represented in drama, and Kushner memorably depicts the culture clash between Indian immigrants and teenage Tino’s Italian-American family from New Jersey. Kushner's language contrasts Tino’s poetical visions of space with more mundane interchanges as the characters debate whether Tino can donate bone marrow to the seriously ill half-sister he has never met. The most memorable character is Tino’s father San, a true Archie Bunker for our time, who is blinded by his many prejudices at the same time he wants the best for the son he adores.
  • Frostbite
    14 Oct. 2018
    "I just can’t believe that my wife—my darling bride of fifteen years—chopped off my best friend’s foot while he was still alive." This hilariously macabre little play, which I was fortunate to see at the Secret Theatre in 2017, treats cannibalism and jealousy with grotesque humor and unlike so many "10-minute plays," never wastes a word.
  • THE SECRET LIFE OF BIVALVES
    14 Oct. 2018
    If you are seriously interested in the darkest fantasies in the mind of a clam or oyster, you will not find them here. As with others of her plays, Rachel Carnes loves to tease her audience with a whimsical, half-surreal treatment of her subject matter that doesn't always make logical sense but works anyway. How else can you interpret a play with characters named Blennie, Grunyon, and Lancelet playing out a police interrogation where the "cops" talk about shampoo, pleated pants, and jazz concerts, and also offer the "prisoner" a Snickers bar and ice cream?
  • wombshot
    14 Oct. 2018
    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.
  • The Drumhellers of Bloody Dick Creek
    10 Oct. 2018
    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.
  • BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO
    2 Oct. 2018
    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.

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