Community

19 pages

4 m, 3 w

Charles Augustus Milverton is a blackmailer who preys on women who have at times slipped into indiscretions. Thus Lady Eva Blackwell wrote several imprudent letters to a young squire, which Milverton now possesses, and threatens to release them to her future husband if she does not give him 7,000 pounds. Sherlock Holmes, who agrees to represent her, refuses payment. Instead he and Watson resort to obtaining the letters by burglarizing Milverton's home. While doing so, they surreptitiously witness his meeting with a veiled woman whose letters had been sent by ...

67 pages

4 m, 4 w

Margaret Miller is a self-styled "barracuda" literary agent whose new client, Shane Velasco, star of action films, is expected for dinner and contract negotiations. Her routine business meeting becomes a comedy playground when her associate (and ex-husband) Hank shows up with his own client, Madame Guadelupe Montevideo, "world famous" hypnotist. When Margaret insults Guadelupe, she turns her fiery temper and flare for the dramatic on Margaret, hypnotizing her into a shy, five-year-old child. Coping with her growing pains are her roommate Janet, a bored execut...

50 pages

5 m, 9 w, 2 boys, 1 girl, extras

It's frantic in the Albert home. Mom is trying to direct a Christmas pageant that no one wants to be in. Dad, an obstetrician, is hoping he doesn't have to deliver any babies the night of the pageant so that he can attend. David, 12, is trying to avoid Victoria Monroe, the meanest girl in town, who insists she play Mary to his Joseph so that they can hold hands. Molly, 15, is worried and guilty when her dreaded math teacher, Miss Morris, informs her mom just how far Molly and her friends have begun harassing the new girl, Darlene. But some special Christmas m...

50 pages

6 m, 3 w

Hard times have come on Gumption Gulch and Grandma Gertie Parker is forced to open a clothes-washing service to earn extra money. Even Sheriff Gideon Gumption is “moonlighting” (though the term has him totally baffled) at the stagecoach office and a local lunch spot. Grandma Gertie’s old nemesis has sent her two boys, Luther and Ulysses Bragg, to town to put Gertie’s laundry service out of business as payback for an old feud. Add in a possum-farming brother and sister couple (Elrod has a serious case of “the anxieties”), a blacksmith who dreams of being a com...

35 pages

3 m, 1 w, 16 flexible

A small California town is under mandatory evacuation as a huge wild fire threatens its citizens, their homes, and the surrounding forest. Just as the family is about to leave, their unsuspecting dogs Loony and Max are tricked by Prince, the evil cat. Following the cat’s sinister advice, the sweet but gullible dogs disappear to avoid the vet and to find the barbecue sausages, leaving the family no choice but to drive off without them. During their big adventure to find their family again, the dogs journey through the forest where they encounter pushy raccoons...

12 pages

3 m, 2 w, 1 extra

Farmer Amos Hollister and his wife, Judith, order their daughter Matilda to leave their sight forever after she weds Roger Cameron. But when Roger is on the brink of ruin, he seeks Amos in desperation. Big mistake! In fact, mistakes make the performance of this melodrama even funnier. Prompting the actors is necessary, and even suggested in several places in the script. About 20 minutes.

74 pages

4 m, 4 w

In this high-voltage sequel to Bram Stoker's classic vampire tale, Baroness Katarina Stephanowski of Rumania - who is actually the widow of Count Dracula - moves to England in search of fresh blood. She gains entrance to the country home of Dr. Vincent Grant and his daughter, Diana. Attracted to Diana's fiance, Jeremy Randolph, the baroness attempts to make him her mate. When the Grants discover Jeremy bitten on the neck and nearly drained of blood, Dr. Grant sends for Lucy Seward. She has survived Dracula's bite herself and realizes what a dangerous adversar...

67 pages

2 m, 2 w or 8 m, 8 w

All four of the these plays involve a woman and man who are strangers to each other until happenstance causes them to meet in a confined space. Through self-disclosure their lives touch and perhaps change. Each play uses the stage “gimmick” of being able to hear the characters’ thoughts as well as their spoken words. Although the themes are on the serious side there is much humor. In "Ducks At Thirty-Five Thousand," a young man who is planning a suicide and a young woman who is planning an abortion meet on an airliner. As he finally reveals his plan, her reac...

62 pages

Interracial cast of 4 m, 3 w, 2 flexible, 1 child

Cole, a slave, struggles with the prospect of escaping--the personal struggles and danger it would mean for his family. Escape would also mean forgoing all the trust and faith his “owner,” Mr. Jones, had invested in Cole. After much thought, and arguing with his wife, Cole agrees that an opportunity for freedom is worth sacrificing his fairly contented life as a slave. Their plan of escape, however, is found out. Cole must come face to face with Mr. Jones and suffer the consequences. The cost is great. The slave gives his life for individual freedom. The slav...

62 pages

2 m, 3 w

Janine, the temperamental half of a totally unmatched set of twins, arrives at her sister's house in the middle of the night, making good on her endless threats to leave her husband. When Arlene and her husband try to explain it isn't a good time for a houseguest, Janine is surprised to find their mama has left their daddy on the very same night. Chaos ensues as Mama and Janine each stubbornly refuses to return to her own home. To add to Janine's problems, Red Jennings, a mysterious figure from her past, returns to town. In an emotional outpouring, Janine rev...

56 pages

4 m, 3 w

Lord Liverpool, a chauvinistic proprietor of a 19th century London newspaper, must deal not only with a wife who’s a suffragette and a daughter who seeks own career, but an old school rival out to embarrass him. The plot concerns a series of dispatches being penned by an adventurer in Africa, which have made the Herald a popular newspaper. Unbeknownst to Lord Liverpool, however, the dispatches are actually being written by his wife Athena, who seeks a literary career. Their daughter Calliope, suspecting something is amiss, goes to work for the rival newspaper...

64 pages

3 m, 1 w, 2 flex, 1 young adult

Jobie King, well known and loved in his rural area of West Texas for brewing delicious - albeit unlicensed - beer, has become a target. His greedy Yankee sons-in-law plan to swindle his illegal brewery away from him and turn it into the newest internet fad. Adding insult to injury, the dastardly duo seek to put Jobie, recently widowed, out to pasture, abandoning him at a nursing home. As avarice and technology threaten to ruin his rustic yet pleasant way of life, the fiercely independent and unrepentant Jobie is determined to take back what is rightfully his....

80 pages

17 roles (approx. 8 m, 9 w)

A "melodrama plus," this play cleverly intertwines a classic "losing the homestead" plot with a realistic subplot in which high school drama students are putting on (what else?!) a melodrama. The Colonel and his daughter Belle are trying to keep the family restaurant (and Belle's heart) from the clutches of the villain I.C. Blizzard, a fast food franchiser. The hero, Beau, suffers from a perpetual crisis of confidence that he deals with by cooking and obsessive psychoanalysis. The student characters trade insults that imperfectly hide a budding romance. Holdi...

36 pages

5 m, 4 w, 1 flexible

Follow the adventures of two Victorian street urchins—annoyingly enthusiastic and melodramatic—who still await with joy the return of their missing father after many years. As they gratefully and cheerfully accept their circumstances of foraging and freezing, Pip and Mimsy, accompanied by friend Fimm Bimbles, have a chance encounter with an evil and hypnotic puppet named Begeloits, who draws the unwitting children into his nefarious plan to kill the Queen. Coincidence and fate lead Pip and Mimsy to Court where they are reunited with their miserly Uncle Scroog...

32 pages

3 m, 2 w, 1 flexible

Get the youngsters in your audience twitching their noses, making engine noises, bowing to the king, catching imaginary gold thread, and shouting out names, especially Rumpelstiltskin! With such audience participation, this fairy tale adaptation is loads of active fun. It features a braggart father, his long-suffering wife, their poor but beautiful daughter, a strict rule-enforcing chancellor; a monarch whose kingdom depends on straw being spun into gold, and of course, the mysterious little man who is willing to perform that exceptional feat – but at a treme...