Recommended by Jennifer O'Grady

Smart and super-funny ten-minute two-hander that takes on a whole bunch of current topics in its mere and incredibly engrossing ten minutes. Would be great on stage!

Oh so funny! I love Soucy's version of Mrs. Claus as a very smart and very pissed-off businesswoman. A super-fun ten-minute holiday play.

Reading Alterman's moving and poetic two-hander is like taking a short masterclass on how to write a powerful and unforgettable ten-minute play. No surprise this play has had so many productions--it's just so good and also capable of appealing to audiences everywhere. Would love to see this staged.

Claudia Haas’s play is a profoundly beautiful theatrical imagining of Margot Frank, which moves back and forth in time and enlarges and shows us aspects of Margot beyond the studious teenager depicted in THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK. This is an essential play for all time including our current time and should be produced over and over. It’s also a fantastic choice for schools due to its necessary story and large cast of teen characters. I hope it sees many productions.

Hilarious! ("Dirty Gimlet!") Sickles skewers royalty and punctuation in this short play with four very fun characters (and a very funny and surprisingly apt title). I have no doubt this would be a blast to perform as well as to watch.

A very funny and very lovely short play about a Christmas gift that isn't quite right, with two fabulous roles for 70+ actors. This would make a great addition to a short play fest including any holiday festival.

Soltero-Brown’s darkly comic, super-smart, wholly original play about one very complicated wedding-day is a marvelous blend of theatricality and humor, as four characters who matter deeply to each other can’t quite figure out how to move past the problems each sees, including an obsession with current politics. The use of the wedding-officiator is also wonderfully fresh and boundary-pushing as well as very funny. Soltero-Brown has a great gift for mining the pains and absurdities of life and love with wit, compassion, and truth, in dialogue that offers much to collaborators. This is a playwright to watch.

Even Santa gets lonely, but when an elf tries to help by making a partner for Santa, things don't work out quite as expected, largely due to the selection of jello as construction material. A very funny alternative view of Santa.

Beautiful. John Mabey has quickly become one of my favorite writers for their ability to tell meaningful stories with emotion, subtext and characters we care about, all skillfully presented in spare and concise language that offers so much to actors and enables audiences to lean in and leave changed. This is an absolutely wonderful play, but read anything by Mabey and you will see what I mean.

Super-fun holiday monologue delivered by the traditionally scary yet (here) surprisingly nostalgic Krampus. I also love that Krampus is wearing a smoking jacket!