The One-­Minute Play Festival (#1MPF) is America’s largest and longest running short form theatre company in the country, founded by Producing Artistic Director Dominic D’Andrea. #1MPF is a barometer project that investigates the zeitgeist of different communities through dialogue and consensus building sessions and a performance of many moments. For the third year #1MPF continues a dynamic partnership with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, with part of the proceeds benefiting BPT’s artist residency programming.

Absence tells the story of 76-year-old Helen whose lapses in memory have not diminished her need to control her family, and as the family’s matriarch, she is used to getting her own way. But now Helen’s world is growing more chaotic by the minute, and she’s furious. No one seems to be taking it seriously. Even her doctors are turning a deaf ear. A surprising, theatrical, and deeply moving look at a family in crisis and at one woman’s struggle to survive in an ever-changing reality.

Inspired by Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, Burning follows lesbian ex-Army sergeant Cy who uses a young soldier to profess her true feelings to the woman they both love. Fresh from the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military, Cy builds her own world of secrets and lies even as she battles a former adversary with far-ranging and tragic results. From the author of the wacky and wonderful Matter Familias, this witty, word-wise romance is also deeply passionate and hard-hitting. Burning will make you think twice before you keep quiet about injustice. And if you ever hesitated to speak your love, you won’t want to wait another minute.

This fast-paced, coming-of-age comedy centers on Kenny, a young man struggling to make ends meet in 1980s New York City. His new job at the Fulton Fish Market is complicated with some daunting demands, math puzzles, and some shady characters who want to hide some even shadier dealings with the cash register. The REAL Fulton Fish Market is lost to the ages, but she comes alive again in this exhilarating look at the lost world of Lower Manhattan long before gentrification and Homeland Security. Barkhimer, winner of the Kennedy Center’s National John Cauble Award, is a skilled caricaturist and his gifts are in rare form in this seriously comedic look at “fish.”