Recommended by Jennifer O'Grady

A beautiful and transporting deep-breath of a play that asks us not just to see but to experience and live in the moment. Just as Sylvia does for Miller, Haas's short play brings me right into Monet's gorgeous Water Lilies painting, a remarkable achievement for a play. This would be even more wonderful on stage.

I love this short play which deservedly took a top-three place in Weathervane Playhouse's 8x10 Theatrefest. It's got three terrific roles including two for older women, and tells a poignant and very human story with moments of laugh-out-loud humor and great structural skill. As an added bonus it has a wonderfully uplifting ending.

In its taut ten minutes Taube's darkly comic horror play is a powerful exploration of trauma. I love the surprising structure and tense relationship between the two brothers who are united in their desperate need to survive. The play's imagery and theatricality are wonderful too. Would be very powerful on stage.

Powerful and scary monologue delivered, seductively and frighteningly, by a gun to its owner or some other potential user--"without you, I'm a paperweight." A really fantastic piece we need right now.

An earnest inventor brings his new virtual-reality invention to a TV game show, hoping to win, and gets rather more "reality" than he bargained for, in Plumridge's very funny short play. Actors and audiences would have so much fun with this. The tongue-twisting dialogue is a delight!

Beautiful and devastating ten-minute two-hander with two fantastic roles for women including an older woman. And that ending, wow!

From the very first scene description--no, actually, from the title itself--you just know you're in the hands of a master writer. Sickles' play is hilarious and I wish it were longer because I loved reading it so much.

Fantastic monologue in the voice of a teen girl who cuts herself. It's so clear from this monologue and much of Hageman's other very wonderful work that she understands teens inside-out and is therefore able to give them a voice they don't always get to have. Such a gift to young performers and teens who don't always see themselves accurately or adequately represented in theater or heard in today's world.

Very funny and heartwarming comedy/adventure play combining LGBTQ themes with organized crime, a drag bar and a collection of surprising characters we come to love. Murray has a gift for writing characters who fall under the radar of ordinary law-abiding life yet are still extremely likable, and for writing physical comedy as this play contains. I had the pleasure of hearing a reading and it was clear that the actors loved performing it. Loads of fun!

Phenomenally powerful and theatrical ten-minute play investigating white privilege and centering the only Black woman at a table with people she had viewed as friends. Highly recommend and hope it receives many productions.