This year's Best of PlayGround-L.A. is a distillation of the best short plays selected from more than 100 submissions and 36 works developed as part of the Zephyr Theater's Monday Night PlayGround staged reading series. The six finalists include works of tragedy-made-comedy (“Romeo and Jules” by Ron Burch), gender and identity (“Pinocchia” by Kathleen Cecchin), serial-killer whimsy (“The Kid in the Trunk” by John Corcoran), social anxiety and dial tones (“The Prince and the Closet Castle” by Andrew Crabtree), love and possibly cockroaches (“Waiting for Kafka” by Kevin Crust) and recurring nightmares of air travel (“Flight Time” by Carolina Rojas Moretti). As you may have read in these pages, it's a thankless job being a playwright in Los Angeles, so now's your best opportunity to see these labors of literary love in all their evanescent glory before their authors go back to their day jobs as contract killers or plumbers or something. Zephyr Theatre, 7456 Melrose Ave., W. Hlywd.; Mon., May 13, 7:30 p.m., $50, $100 & $150. (323) 992-6766, zephyrtheatre.com.

Mon., May 13, 7:30 p.m., 2013

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