This cornucopia of comedy showcases works by major playwrights and emerging young writers, with casts of all sizes and diverse and challenging roles for actors of every age and type. You’ll discover such colorful characters as a businessman free-falling from a plane, an embittered sword swallower, a punkish girl skateboarder, and retirees in post-apocalyptic Siberia, alongside plays that unleash the humor in high school reunions, alien invasions, office cubicle farms, and even post-Katrina New Orleans. Perfect for actors, students, theater lovers, and comedy fans, Shorter, Faster, Funnier covers the spectrum of humor, from slyly witty to over-the-top outrageous. Rob Ackerman ● Billy Aronson ● John Augustine ● Pete Barry ● Dan Berkowitz ● Adam Bock ● Eric Coble ● Philip Dawkins ● Anton Dudley ● Christopher Durang ● Liz Ellison ● Halley Feiffer ● Peter Handy ● Jeffrey Hatcher ● Amy Herzog ● Mikhail  Horowitz ● David Ives ● Caleen Sinnette Jennings ● Ean Miles Kessler ● Dan Kois ● Eric Lane ● Drew Larimore ● Warren Leight ● Mark Harvey Levine ● Elizabeth Meriwether ● Michael Mitnick ● Megan Mostyn-Brown ● Mark O’Donnell ● Nicole Quinn ● Wayne Rawley ● Theresa Rebeck ● Jacqueline Reingold ● Laura Shaine ● Nina Shengold ● Jane Shepard ● Edwin Sanchez ● Samara Siskind ● Daryl Watson ● Barbara Wiechmann ● Mary Louise Wilson ● Garth Wingfield ● Gary Winter ● Elizabeth Wong ● Dana Yeaton Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have been editing contemporary theater anthologies for more than twenty years. Eric Lane's award-winning plays have been published and performed in the United States, Canada, Europe, and China. Plays include Ride, Times of War, Heart of the City, Dancing on Checkers' Grave, and  Filming O'Keeffe. Floating , a PlayPenn finalist, was workshopped at Raven Theatre. Eric's short plays are published in Best American Short Plays, Poems and Plays , and the Foreign Language Press (Beijing). He wrote and produced the short films First Breath and Cater-Waiter , which he also directed; both films screened in more than forty cities worldwide. For TV's Ryan's Hope he received a Writers Guild Award. Honors include the Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award, the La MaMa Playwright Award, and fellowships at Yaddo, VCCA, and St. James Cavalier in Malta. Eric is an honors graduate of Brown University, and artistic director of Orange Thoughts, a not-for-profit theater and film company in New York City. Nina Shengold's plays include Finger Foods, War at Home, Homesteaders , and Romeo/Juliet , and have been produced around the world. Her one-act No Shoulder was filmed by director Suzi Yoonessi, with Melissa Leo and Samantha Sloyan. Nina won a Writers Guild Award for her teleplay Labor of Love , starring Marcia Gay Harden; other teleplays include Blind Spot , with Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, and Unwed Father . Her books include the novel Clearcut ; River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers (with photographer Jennifer May), and a growing posse of pseudonymous books for young readers. A graduate of Wesleyan, she is currently teaching creative writing at Manhattanville College. Nina lives in New York's Hudson Valley, where she has been books editor of Chronogram magazine since 2004. Introduction Asian chefs cite five flavor notes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and spicy—without which no meal is complete. While assembling the plays in this anthology, the editors enjoyed a dazzling range of comedic hors d'oeuvres. From laugh-out-loud funny to subtly amusing, caustic, witty, or outrageous, there are as many flavors of comedy as there are sense of humor. We read over 400 short plays and monologues to create this all-you-can-eat comic buffet. We found delectable morsels by celebrated humorists Christopher Durang ( Funeral Parlor ), David Ives ( The Blizzard ), Warren Leight ( Norm-Anon ), Mark O'Donnell ( You Know Who Else I Hate? ), and Theresa Rebeck ( The Contract ); inspiring monologues by actor/playwrights Halley Feiffer ( Thank You So Much fo Stopping ), Dan Berkowitz ( Sourpuss) , and Tony Award winner Mary Louise Wilson ( Tirade ); plus enough superb audition pieces, two-handers, and ensemble plays to satisfy laugh-hungry actors, readers, and audience members. We chose monologues of all lengths, from Liz Ellison's swift Gabrielle and Elizabeth Wong's spiky Ripper Girl to Jeffrey Hatcher's epic Match Wits with Minka Lupino , from his monologue trio Murderers . Pete Barry's irascible businessman extends his free fall from a plane to hilarious lengths in Nine Point Eight Meters per Second per Second . Jane Shephard's Long Distance reveals a man's thorny encounter with a former classmate, while Edwin Sánchez's Ernesto the Magnificent fiercely paints a performance by an embittered sword swallower. There's also a wealth of play for two actors. Amy Herzog's Christmas Present , Mark Harvey Levine's The Rental , and Garth Wingfield's Mary Just Broke Up with This Guy put unique spins o