Short plays, like short stories, have never caught on with the popular culture to the extent to which they so richly deserve. And yet they offer such a better return, really, for the public’s entertainment dollar. More stories, more sets of characters, more writers, directors and all of the other creative elements that go into live theatre for the same single ticket price.

We can also sample the wares of each story – dialogue or soliloquy, atmosphere, climax, denouement – measured out in minutes instead of hours and if, by chance, it’s not our favorite cup of chai, well then, a carafe of coffee is on its way as soon as the prop techs can change the set.

Last weekend at the Vineyard Playhouse and this coming weekend, Oct. 14 and 15, starting at 7:30 p.m. on both nights, five short plays have been and will be presented. The plays are different each night except for The Graduation of Grace by Tony-awarding winning playwright Wendy Kesselman which is being repeated because it is just so good.

It’s the night of the 8th grade graduation at some middle-American middle school and class president Grace, played by 12-year-old Danielle Hopkins of the Oak Bluffs School, rolls onto the stage riding a scooter and singing. She’s clad all in white, from the silk flower in her hair right down to her perfect socks and patent leather shoes. She’s simply happy to be alive, young, and free.

But very quickly we, and Grace, are introduced to the complexities of life. Grace is a young black girl on the cusp of adulthood. Her best friend is a white girl named Heather and as the play continues we learn that Grace has recently been exposed to the poetry of William Blake. At first she is enthralled with “Tiger, Tiger, burning bright,” but later, when she reads, “And I am black, but O! my soul is white,” she is crushed to think that, while she loves William Blake, he emphatically does not love her. But it is also through the long dead English poet that Grace comes to learn of African American poets such as Countee Cullen. Harking back to Blake, she learns “to bear the beams of love.”

In The Last Appointment by Madge Kaplan, a woman named Molly (Shelagh Smilie) shows up for her weekly therapy visit. Her shrink, Ann (Ellen DiStasi) appears a moment later. “Oh, you’re still here?” says Molly absentmindedly. “Yes,” replies Ann.

It only takes a short while to figure out that Ann has recently died and that Molly, after fifteen years of analysis with her, has materialized in her imagination for a wrap up. “Please don’t use the word ‘closure,’” Molly begs her therapist at one point.

In this imaginary session, Molly has a chance to ask all the questions she never dared to ask before, such as, “So what happens after death?” and “Was I your favorite client?”

The best part is that Ann answers her rather than dodging behind various therapeutic ambiguities such as, “Well, what do you think about that?”

Ms. DiStasi brings a lovely restraint and elegance to her role; this is no ghost or figment of the imagination, this is everyone’s dream shrink. Ms. Smilie plays the perfectly calibrated cosmopolitan neurotic; an intelligent, lost, beguiling woman whom we can well envision in therapy for a very long a time like a character from a Woody Allen movie.

Slow Train Coming by Maureen Hourihan is a play in three acts, of which the middle act was presented last weekend. Rose (Victoria Campbell) and her father, Francis (Clark Maffitt), sit down at an Italian restaurant in Boston. As the two wait for Rose’s sister, Kate (Molly Purves), to join them we can already tell that Francis is in the early stages of dementia. After Kate joins them and all three have ordered from a hilariously befuddled waiter played by Paul Munafo, Kate begins pestering her sister, “Well? Well? What did the doctors say?”

Rose puts off answering by offering an amused and bittersweet snapshot of their day, including how they lost their way driving to the hospital. Eventually, the diagnosis that Francis has Alzheimer’s disease does come out. To which Francis answers, “Oh, is that all? I thought there might be something wrong with my mind.”

Mr. Maffitt brings a seraphic charm to his role and Ms. Campbell and Ms. Purves both radiate love and compassion as they discuss and argue over what needs to be done. We hope this honest appraisal will see them through.

This coming weekend brings the second performance of The Graduation of Grace, along with two more short plays.

Maker’s Mark by Alexandra Bullen and starring Elizabeth Erwin and Molly Purves centers on a customer in a bar unburdening herself to a female bartender. Ms. Bullen is a year-round Islander and a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

The Lovers is a short musical inspired by the painting of the same name by René Magritte, with book and music by Marisa Michelson, and lyrics by Joshua H. Cohen. It features Elizabeth Erwin and Ethan Paulini portraying a couple who have been together for so long, they have no idea of their separate identities.

For showtimes and tickets, call 508-696-6300 or visit vineyardplayhouse.org.