The Best Plays for Schools
22 Nov
From full-length to one-acts, we have you covered for 2018.
SHORT PLAYS
SHORT PLAYS
By Don Zolidis
Short Play, Comedy, Drama, Contemporary
CASTING: 3M, 10F, 11M or F
A new theatre teacher is bringing a production of A Chorus Line to the high school. Though the hopefuls range from shy to outrageous, and from diva-like to determined, everyone has a chance to step into the spotlight.
By Jonathan Rand
Short Play, Comedy, Contemporary
CASTING: 7M, 7F
Dating can be hard. Especially when your date happens to be a raging kleptomaniac, or your grandmother's bridge partner, or a mime. Check Please follows a series of blind dinner dates that couldn't get any worse -- until they do. Could there possibly be a light at the end of the tunnel?
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By Dennis Kelly
Short Play, Drama, Contemporary
CASTING: 11M or F
Some teenagers do something bad, really bad, then panic and cover the whole thing up. But when they find that the cover-up unites them and brings harmony to their once fractious lives, where's the incentive to put things right?
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By Alan Ayckbourn
Short Play, Comedy, Contemporary
CASTING: 22M or F
This is a bright comedy by the famous English comic playwright about the extraordinary powers of Ernie Fraser, a dreamer with a difference. Ernie has a vivid imagination; and his thoughts have the disconcerting habit of turning into reality.
By Terry Gabbard
Short Play, Comedy, Drama, Contemporary
CASTING: 7M, 7F
The unassuming location of a dock extending out onto a small lake serves as the backdrop for five different stories. The entire ensemble gathers on the dock together for the final scene. In a poetic epilogue, they all discover the true meaning of Our Place -- both comedic and tragic.
By Tom Stoppard
Short Play, Comedy
CASTING: 5M, 3F
Feuding theatre critics Moon and Birdboot are swept into the whodunit they are viewing. In the hilarious spoof of Agatha Christie-like melodramas that follows, Moon and Birdboot become dangerously implicated in the lethal activities of an escaped madman.
By Stephen Gregg
Short Play, Comedy, Contemporary
CASTING: 15M or F
As the ticking clock reminds you, only 60 minutes remain to complete this oh-so-important predictor of your future. But you didn't get the review sheets, the teacher doesn't like you and your classmates are blatantly cheating. Then you reach the essay question. The good news -- it's an opinion essay. The bad news -- it's in Chinese. And things aren't going to get better!
FULL LENGTH PLAYS:
By George Orwell. Adapted by Peter Hall.
Full Length Play, Drama
CASTING: 10M, 6F
The plays starts with a schoolboy sitting down to read the novel by a toy farmyard. As he reads, the farmyard comes to life around him, enacting the animals' rebellion. The dialogue is complemented by Mitchell's witty lyrics and Peaslee's music, jaunty at first, but increasingly threatening and dissonant.
By Peter Bloedel
Full Length Play, Comedy
CASTING: 13M, 4F, 4M or F
A whimsical reinvention of Shakespeare's tragic love story, complete with rhymed couplets, creative wordplay, and fantastical machines -- similar to something Dr. Seuss might have come up with if he ever had his way with the script...
This title is also available in a one-act version.
By Celeste Raspanti
Full Length Play, Drama, 1940s / WWII
CASTING: 4M, 7F
CASTING: 4M, 7F
Over 15,000 Jewish children passed through Terezin, and only about a hundred were still alive when Terezin was liberated at the end of the war. One of the survivors, Raja, having lived through it all, tells the true story of the children.
This title is also available in a one-act version.
By Eugene Ionesco. Translated by Derek Prouse.
Full Length Play, Comedy
CASTING: 11M, 6F
A small town is besieged by one roaring citizen who becomes a rhinoceros and proceeds to trample on the social order. As more citizens are transformed into rhinoceroses, the trampling becomes overwhelming, and more and more citizens become rhinoceroses. One sane man, Berenger, remains, unable to change his form and identity.
By Philip Ridley
Full Length Play, Drama, Contemporary
CASTING: 6M, 3F
Fourteen-year-old Jake, the classroom "geek", takes refuge on the roof of a tower block in order to write his stories. Before long, other young people join him and the taunting begins. Although at first he endeavours to hide, he learns to fight back in the only way he knows how -- storytelling.
By Laura Annawyn Shamas. Based on the book by Joan Lindsay.
Full Length Play, Mystery/Thriller, Drama
CASTING: 8M, 18F
For a group of Australian schoolgirls, a romantic Valentine's Day outing ends in an intriguing mystery. What has happened to the three seniors and the mathematics teacher on the top of the jagged peaks of Hanging Rock? Picnic at Hanging Rock explores a baffling disappearance which takes its toll on a small community in the Australian countryside.
By Don Zolidis
Full Length Play, Comedy
CASTING: 1M, 1F, 3M or F
The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are turned on their heads in this fast-paced, rollicking ride as two narrators and several actors attempt to combine all 209 stories ranging from classic like Snow White to more bizarre, obscure stories like The Girl Without Hands. A wild, free-form comedy with lots of audience participation and madcap fun.
Adapted by Christopher Sergel. From the book by S.E. Hinton.
Full Length Play, Drama
CASTING: 10M, 8F
This stage adaptation deals with real people, seen through the eyes of young Ponyboy, a Greaser on the wrong side of life, caught up in territorial battles between the have-it-made rich kids -- the Socs -- and his tough, underprivileged greaser family and friends.
By Thornton Wilder
Full Length Play, Drama, 1900-1910
CASTING: 17M, 7F
The story follows the small town of Grover's Corners through three acts: "Daily Life," "Love and Marriage," and "Death and Eternity." Narrated by a stage manager and performed with minimal props and sets, audiences follow the Webb and Gibbs families as their children fall in love, marry, and eventually -- in one of the most famous scenes in American theatre -- die.
Song and dance more your style? Find a list of school musicals HERE!
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