Children's Theatre Plays

28 pages

1 m, 2 w, 5 flexible

Based on the African fable of Anansi, the play tells the story of a "brave" spider's desire to bring stories into the world and the difficult challenges he faces achieving his goal. Anansi must battle the python, outwit the tiger, protect himself from the hornet's sting, and endure a frustrating encounter with Mmotia, the bad-tempered fairy. In addition, he even has to deal his critical mother-in-law! Throughout it all Anansi thinks himself clever, but in reality, it is only with the help of his wife Osa, who is really the clever one in the family, that Anans...

73 pages

7 m, 11 w (doubling possible)

Originally commissioned and produced by the Dallas Children's Theatre, this full-length play is a faithful adaptation of the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Young Sara Crewe arrives at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies in Victorian London. There the young, beloved heiress shines as the star pupil - until the death of her wealthy father completely reverses her fortune. The greedy headmistresses allow Sara to become a servant at the academy and live in a cold, miserable attic room. Sara uses her vivid imagination to overcome adversity and even br...

52 pages

7 m, 2 w

The Robinson family is on a journey overseas to begin a new life. After a harrowing storm, their tall-masted ship sinks, and they are shipwrecked on a deserted island. Mother and Father and their three children, Fritz, Ernest and Franz, are now forced to truly begin a new life: a struggle for survival. Salvaging what they can, the innovative family constructs a tree house in which to live. They embark on daily scavenging treks to recover what food, weapons, and other supplies have washed ashore the uninhabited island...or is it? Soon, strange things begin to ...

68 pages

7 m, 6 w, extras. Doubling possible.

The classic story of two emotionally-stunted children who discover, through their love for a garden, and the teachings of a boy of the English moors, that the key to happiness lies in caring for others. The story opens as two British officers in India discover 10-year-old Mary Lennox alone, her parents having just died in the cholera epidemic. She is sent back to England to live with an uncle, Archibald Craven, whom she doesn’t know, in the foreboding Misselthwaite Manor. His son Colin is sickly and bedridden and his cries can be heard echoing down the dark h...

62 pages

Flexible casting

Design your own evening of entertainment from these four enchanting tales filled with charm, imagination, and a quirky sense of humor. With lots of small, easily learned roles, all of which are fun to play, these comedies are enjoyable for young actors, onstage and off. In "You Call That a Bed Monster?" Princess Julia wakes up one morning to discover that her beloved bed monster, Humphrey, is missing. Her bumbling guards drag in an assortment of critters, all mistaken for Humphrey, much to the chagrin of the King and Queen. In the title tale, "The Magic Harmo...

30 pages

Ensemble cast of 5 to 22 actors

Some of the gentle, humorous, and well-loved characters from the writings of Beatrix Potter come alive in this gem of a story theatre play for young audiences. The play consists of adaptations of three Beatrix Potter stories: “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny” (one of the Peter Rabbit tales); her renowned Christmas story, “The Tailor of Gloucester”; and “Grasshopper Belle and Susan Emmet,” Potter’s adaptation of the Aesop fable. Also included are two poems from the “Apply Dapply Rhymes” and a third inspired by them. The pieces are short, the action continuous, and ...

36 pages

With doubling: 2 m, 4 w.

Before putting "Through the Looking Glass" down on paper in 1860s, Lewis Carroll told a colleague’s young daughter, Alice Liddell (the real Alice in the books), the story of talking chess pieces. The novel, of course, was a sequel to his earlier one, "Alice in Wonderland." This play is set in the early 1920s as a now elderly Alice Liddell reflects on the telling of the story. Faithful to Carroll’s expression of childhood fears of growing up, this adaptation keeps the Victorian charm and merriment by maintaining Carroll’s scenes intact. The audience is transpo...

44 pages

2 m, 4 w, 1 flexible. (Seven actors play 12 characters.)

Snow White is a dirt-smudged stable girl, innocent to the point of cluelessness, whose stepmother, the Queen, must be the most beautiful woman in all the land. But when the Magic Mirror informs the Queen that Snow White has the gift of inner beauty, the Queen goes beserk with jealousy. The Magic Mirror and the castle servants comically thwart the Queen's first attempts to poison Snow White. Fleeing into the woods, Snow White finds the House of the Three Slobs. Therein live Grouchy, Snivelly, and Slacker. They don't want to let her in, but she promises to help...

58 pages

Large, flexible cast

From the day we're hatched to the day we spread our wings and fly on our own, there are requisite, riotous rites of passage that must be experienced. This collection of humorous scenes explores the innocent squawk of infancy, the terrible twos, the treacherous teens and everything in between. There are survival courses on how to handle any kind of baby-sitter - from the perfect to the perfectly insane. There are tactics for dealing with those who endeavor to shape, stretch and warp our minds and bodies - like gym teachers, substitute teachers and those cafete...

38 pages

2 to 12

There’s nothing like real, live storytellers to catch the imagination of youngsters. With these six tales, each told by a pair of storytellers, students can go on an enchanted voyage, whether they’re in a classroom, cafeteria or theatre. Let your young audiences, from kindergarten through 6th grade, connect, learn, and be entertained through these inventive scripts in one of the oldest forms of entertainment -- storytelling! Running from 6 to 12 minutes each, they include “The Cat, the Mouse and the Huge Pot of Cheese,” the Aesop tale of the two traditional e...

34 pages

2 m, 2 w, 1 flexible

Since its first appearance in 1898, Kenneth Grahame’s "The Reluctant Dragon" has delighted both young and old alike with its tale of the lazy dragon who shows the townspeople that they shouldn’t be prejudiced against dragons, or for that matter, people who are different. One early morning, on their way from the market, a mother and her young son pass the entrance to a dark cave where mysterious sounds are heard. They soon discover that a dragon has moved in and the son, being rather sensible, decides to visit the new neighbor. The young boy determines that th...

48 pages

18-19 roles (2 m, 1 w, 15-16 flexible)

When a pirate ship inadvertently sails over the lost city of Atlantis, an adventure-seeking girl – who happens to be the granddaughter of Poseidon himself – makes friends with a charmingly naïve sailor, causing their two worlds to collide. As the pirates continue to arrr-gue and the Atlanteans ask an endless series of questions with no answers, new friends Duffle and Pana explore strange new worlds they have never seen before. With the help of a Narrator giving advice and a friendly dog who just wants to play, and with Poseidon’s undersea magic adding to the ...

35 pages

5 m, 15 w, extras

The King, his court, and all the villagers are enjoying a festival when the comic captain and his guards rush in to announce that the princesses have again slept through the day, and their shoes have been mysteriously worn out during the night. Distraught, the King orders that no one in the kingdom shall be happy until the riddle is solved. A young beggar comes into the kingdom and the princesses' matron sends him to the enchanted forest where he sees the princesses dancing the night away. We find the beggar is a prince in disguise and the matron explains her...

60 pages

4 m, 2 w, 3 flexible

The Hero Squad, four superhero friends, decide to make amends and invite their arch-enemy, the nefarious criminal mastermind Nikolai Oshgoshbgoshnikov, over for a Christmas party and caroling. Little do they realize, Nikolai is secretly plotting against the heroes with special eggnog designed to turn them evil. Meanwhile, an old roommate from Nikolai's past, the gargantuan bovine supervillain Angus Khan, has returned with his own plan to rule the world. The Hero Squad have a lot on their plate: Not only must they deal with the wrath of one very angry cow, as ...

29 pages

4 m, 7 w, and 7 flexible. Extras and sound effects/musicians for ensemble.

The drama club members assemble to perform “The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales,” but realize there isn’t enough time to do the whole collection and still eat the cookies waiting in the lobby for after the show. The actors condense the tome down to their favorite parts, mixing, matching and mashing up characters, while a clever casting director challenges stereotypes to meet the demand for princess roles among the girls in the company. With the help of a group of musician-dwarfs to play and punctuate the story, the characters head out on a quest to find t...