Full Length (1-10 Actors)

77 pages

5 m, 5 w

Aunt Ollie has been having a hard time keeping her hotel open and her brother, Earl, isn't much help. Ollie has one hope in keeping her "Home Away from Home" open with investor Judith Pomeroy. Unfortunately, before Judith can get a good look at the place, she accidentally gets a generous dose of Earl's recipe for moonshine. Add one UFO-logist, a psychology major, a fat sheriff and a conniving competitor and this hotel starts looking more and more like a real "home"! Int. set.

57 pages

4 m, 4 w

From crazy chicken suits to high tea and crumpets, the hilarity never stops in this rollicking farce. Poor Bobby Philips is racing the clock as high school graduation approaches. In addition to his three part-time jobs (including one at Fried Chicken World), his falling grades, and his threatened scholarship, he's worried sick about his sister, Emily. She's addicted to PBS dramatizations of 18th century English novels and lives in a refined and graceful world of her own imagination. Everyone thinks she is a nut. Enter Bobby's arch nemesis "Death Wish" Hooper,...

65 pages

1 m, 8 w (or 9 w)

Veronica Blather is a sweet little old lady who spends most of her time knitting and solving murders, most of which occur whenever she shows up. Understandably she has a problem finding a place to live. When her niece invites her to stay at a retirement home for old knitters, it seems ideal - until one of its members dies from drinking poisoned punch. Who did it? Was it Matilda, the president of the Crazy Quilt Club, or Lydia, who likes to die on Tuesdays? Could it be Clara, who's a compulsive liar, or the wisecracking Sarafina who doesn't trust anybody and c...

72 pages

3 m, 4 w

Here is a sweet comedy featuring a social-climbing sister who tries to keep her visiting country sister from embarrassing her among her new society friends. Meet Millicent and Coreen – two girls who grew up in Bullfrog Waller. Millicent is now a big-city snob. Her sister, Coreen, on the other hand, chose to stay in the country…until now! How can Millicent keep her embarrassing past a secret when Coreen, as country as cornbread and grits, shows up spouting her backwoods sentiments to everyone at Millicent's party? Frantic, Millicent decides to pass Coreen off ...

46 pages

4 m, 3 w, 2 flexible

A cantankerous grandfather, ill-tempered and paranoid, is determined to think that his grandkids, three young adult siblings, are trying to kill him for their inheritance ($642 and a postcard collection). Grandpa doesn't mind shouting it down the halls of his apartment building to alert whatever neighbors he can. So when Grandpa suddenly slumps forward, face down in the birthday cake at his surprise party, the grandkids realize it looks like murder and they're the suspects. What follows is a fast-paced series of charades, plot twists, off-beat humor and one-l...

69 pages

1 m, 6 w

"If there's any skeletons in the closet, I'll find them!" states Angie, who then opens a closet and has a skeleton literally fly in her face. This is one of the many surprises that faces the undercover police woman who just took on a job as a "domestic engineer," hired by Dr. Hugh Bernard to "find out what's going on." Five elderly spinsters live in the same house and all, apparently, hate each other. And what a group. There's Evelyn, who keeps acting out death scenes for Fiona, who's writing some sort of novel. Then there's Catherine, who keeps alluding to h...

57 pages

3 m, 6 w

You think it's easy to write a murder? Just ask the Marquis Crossing Ladies Society for the Arts. They decide to do just that, especially when they find out they have to pay royalties to do someone else's play. "Anybody can write a murder," Emma tells the others, and Opaline immediately begins to try to strangle the other members "just to figure out how to do it." The ladies soon find themselves writing an "operatic murder mystery dinner theater with possible audience participation," providing no one sells fruit to the audience. Then two actual convicts on th...

62 pages

4 -5 m, 4 w

“The Importance of Being Earnest” is Oscar Wilde's most perfect, and most popular, play. Since its premiere in 1895, it has given joy to generations of theatergoers. The play is often called a "comedy of manners," because in the world Wilde knew and wrote about, late 19th century British high society, manners were everything. In this play, young Jack Worthing and his good friend Algernon find themselves in a ridiculous situation after their fiancées learn they are coincidentally engaged to the same man. A glorious rendition of mistaken identity, Wilde's play ...

52 pages

4 m, 4 w

Waiting in line? Waiting your turn? You don’t have time! Here’s a comedy in six scenes for those who are time-challenged. In the first scene a desperate woman has only 20 minutes to get to the airport to catch her flight and no matter what her beleaguered taxi driver says or does, they remain stuck in a traffic jam. In a different scene, things start to get physical at a restaurant when a couple with dinner reservations (and theatre tickets!) see others entering and being seated before them. In another scene, a jumpy hypochondriac is forced to wait in a docto...

42 pages

5 m, 3 w, 1 flexible

A wacky cast of actors is rehearsing for its big community theatre production of "You Only Die Twice." Marge Cunningham, the author of this "spell-binding murder mystery," runs the Enchanting Dreams Bed-and-Breakfast, which doubles as the community theatre. When she receives word that a top Broadway producer is coming to town to hopefully "discover" some fresh acting talent, she notifies the cast, and they go into high gear to perfect the show before opening night. They decide to stay in character and run their lines as much as possible before the performance...

52 pages

3 to 4 m, 3 w

This drama is based on the true story of the well-known artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, who brought hope and beauty to thousands of children at the concentration camp of Terezin. It’s World War II and the Nazi juggernaut is running full-time, forcing Jews and other “undesirables” into concentration camps. At Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, one woman prisoner tries to make life bearable for the children. Using her passion for art and teaching, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis encourages them to draw pictures, often of home and family, trying to bring comfor...

40 pages

4 - 5 m, 4 w

Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” gets turned upside down in this sequel ... of sorts! Far from the Gothic mood of the original story, this is a broad comedy-mystery with a little bit of the macabre thrown in for fun. Some characters from the original story, as well as a few new ones, are now trapped in a different mansion. They’ve been called together on this dark and stormy night by a mysterious host for a reading by Poe. The guests are unknown to each other, yet there must be a connection because one by one they disapp...

62 pages

4 m, 3 w

What do you do to prepare for a visit from your parents? Plenty, when you're the daughter of strict Italian Catholic parents who expect to meet your female roommate, who is actually a guy. John was hoping to celebrate his and Maria's two-year anniversary as housemates by proposing to her. Instead he finds himself as "Suzanne" wearing a dress and trying to cope with Maria's cranky father, her overbearing mother and her wild younger sister. Then there's Maria's old childhood friend who tries to make his move on Maria as well as "Suzanne." Add John's trouble-mak...

44 pages

4 m, 3 w

Two married couples pool their resources to buy a diner in the middle of the desert. Excited and enthusiastic at first, they come to realize their dream isn’t turning out to be the success they wanted. Unable to afford to fix the diner’s broken sign or pave the dusty parking lot, the hoped-for customers continue to drive by without stopping. Inside the diner, with failing equipment and dwindling funds, the two couples discover they can’t even sell the building for a portion of what they paid for it. They are about to give up in desperation when a handsome, ch...

56 pages

2 m, 7 w

Act I is a play rehearsal at the home of one of the characters, while Act II represents the high school stage with all scenery reversed so that the audience sees only what normally would be back stage. All sound effects are visible; prop table, prompters, stage braces, etc. About every problem a director has ever had is encountered. Comedy abounds as each character has his own particular problem with his part. Grammie in particular never speaks a line, but her presence is felt in more ways than one! A plot around and about high school students.

42 pages

3 m, 4 w

In this hour-long play, timid and somewhat nerdy Arthur Miller (no relation to the playwright) has inherited a century-old mansion from a distant cousin. On arrival he finds more than he bargained for - the ghosts of three relatives who died there more than 70 years ago, and the ghost of their killer, the schizophrenic Uncle George. But these ghosts are not content to rattle chains. They enjoy "life" by re-enacting their deaths, sometimes two or three times a night, each time funnier, faster, and more melodramatically than the last! As they explain to Arthur,...

54 pages

5 m (one non-speaking), 3 w

It's a chilly, rainy night at the Stonebridge School for Proper Young Ladies as the English teacher, the home ec. teacher, the athletic coach, the butler, the head of the alumnae and a mafia hit man break into the dean's study to kill him. The trouble is they each find him already very dead with a noose around his neck, two suicide notes in his pocket and a Japanese ceremonial dagger in his back. Now it's Detective Bliss' job to find out who did what, with what, when, and why. Meanwhile, the suspects are trying to bump each other off. And who is that mysterio...

54 pages

4 m, 3 w

Hailed by George Orwell as “the wittiest play” G.B. Shaw ever wrote, Arms and the Man is a true classic in the history of theater, blending social commentary, romantic comedy, fun and lively characters, and crackling dialogue that leaps off the page! We are in the 1880s, and Raina Petkoff is a young Bulgarian woman, worried about the war her father and fiancé are currently fighting. No sooner is she warned that enemy soldiers may be nearby, than Captain Bluntschli, a war-weary enemy, breaks in and holds her hostage. To their surprise, and the audienc...

57 pages

2 m, 6 w, 1 flexible

Darby is a senior in high school, editor of the school newspaper, and dating the homecoming queen. Everything in his life is wonderful with one secret exception. Darby has been HIV positive since a blood transfusion he received as a child. His friends learn how to deal first with the news of his infection and then with his death when the virus progresses into AIDS. Full of the humor and romance typical of people their ages, the play ends with a dramatic scene that has garnered standing ovations in prior productions. Interior set.

69 pages

4 m, 3 w

Ray Chambers is a sales executive whose company invests in small businesses to franchise them. His target this time is surly Kirby Muldoon, the owner of Kirby's Pizzeria. Kirby has taken a vacation to a mountaintop lodge to work on his anger management. Ray, with the help of his fiancée Julie and his woman-crazy assistant Tony, schemes to win over Kirby. It’s complicated by Tony's infatuation with Kirby's waitress Lisa and the shrill owner of the lodge, Cyndi, who can't seem to stop shrieking at an unseen handyman. After being turned down the first time, Ray ...

48 pages

5 m, 5 w, 4 flex, 2 silent and flex. (With doubling 3 m, 3 w, 1 flex, 2 silent and flex.)

These two science fiction plays are inspired by H.G. Wells' works, The Stolen Bacillus and The Flowering of the Strange Orchid, and Alexandre Dumas' novel, The Black Tulip. In BACTERIAL BROADSIDE, two students working on a science fair project get involved in a potentially deadly heist when unscrupulous villains steal an experimental sample from the famous bacteriologist, Professor Parvulus. Will the world population become infected or will certain guilty parties be easy to spot? This play proves that the little things in life, like Gulliver's Lilliputians, a...

82 pages

6 m, 2 w

World War II rages. In London, the mysterious and charming Mae arrives home in the blackout to find herself accused of spying for Nazi Germany.  Following the death of Mae’s brother, his diary has revealed to the authorities a dreadful and secret past.  In flashbacks, the young Mae, her brother, and their friend find a wounded Nazi pilot who has parachuted to safety in a forest in rural Norfolk.  They imprison and interrogate him, but find him fascinating and bewitching.  Tonight, with her life on the line, Mae must reveal all her secrets before the bombs hav...

63 pages

5 m, 4 w, extras

A Commedia dell'Arte troupe invades a town square on market day and performs a hilarious play. In it, two young men and their servant have come to the town to find love. And they do with two young ladies. But their father, an impoverished man, has plans to marry one to his rich, fat friend, who happens to be the father of one of the young men. The daughter would rather marry the other young man, of course. Meanwhile, a rich, widowed contessa begins to pursue the girls' father. It falls to the faithful servant to arrange all the romances, forcing him to preten...

57 pages

5 m, 4 w

Dr. Frank N. Stein, the crusty great-grandson of the original monster-maker, has developed a magic clone box for "a brighter tomorrow." But his pretty daughter, Julie, who possesses one hair from the head of the King, wants an Elvis clone! Unfortunately, the guy with blue suede shoes and guitar who pops out can't sing a note. And it doesn't get any better when he and the doctor go back into the clone box and their personalities are switched. Add in an ambitious young TV reporter; a psychoanalyst; a crusty housekeeper; a patient with multiple personalities, an...

54 pages

6 - 21 performers possible

This Hans Christian Andersen story is a challenge full of treasures for the unpacking. Kay and Gerda are the best of friends until a piece of an enchanted mirror finds its way into Kay’s eye, causing him to see the world in a cold-hearted way. Soon taken by the Snow Queen, Kay forgets his happy life. Gerda must go on her own journey to find him, and along the way she meets a lonely old woman, a helpful crow and his sweetheart, a robber girl with her reindeer, and a mysterious man who has been with her all along. Overjoyed to find Kay in the Snow Queen’s palac...

26 pages

6 female speaking roles, unlimited female ensemble

Set in the realm of Purgatory, the all-female cast of Desdemona, Emilia, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia explore the roles women choose in their pursuit of love and self-identity. Taking its inspiration from Dante’s Inferno, this visceral play allows powerful actors to reach heightened levels of awareness as they grapple with the ideas of an individual’s purpose in their mortal life and the ramifications it carries over into the immortal world. About 40-50 minutes.

APPROVED UIL OAP ...

79 pages

3 m, 3 w

Randolph Gaston has been murdered, and everybody is after the insurance money (including the deceased). The characters we meet are the grieving widow, the girl next door, the family maid, the minister, the French inspector, and the confused boyfriend -- BUT everyone isn't necessarily who they seem to be. A series of double (and double-double) crosses, mistaken identities, fake accents, hidden bodies, and phony mustaches all add up to a completely intriguing comedy.

62 pages

Widely flexible cast of 32. (Minimum: 2 m, 1 w, 2 flexible.)

Ever wonder why your cat acts like he's king of the world? Or why flamingos stand on one leg? Have you ever imagined what a spider would have to say to a fly just before devouring him, or what "small talk" sounds like when a cannibalistic female praying mantis goes on a date with a naive male praying mantis? Well, Bryan Starchman has given the animals of the world a voice in this hilarious comedy. Focusing on simple costumes and sets, a large flexible cast, and ten whacky scenes, your audience will get to see and hear what animals really think about us humans...

56 pages

3 m, 3 w

Lacy Casey is socially awkward, has a goofy sense of humor, and has raised clumsiness to an art form. If you look in the dictionary under "adorkable," you'd find a picture of Lacy.  Her friends Sue and Trevor love her quirkiness and accept her for who she is. When Lacy goes out on her first date with Bryce, she assumes it will be their last date. After all, her ungraceful mannerisms practically destroy their dinner, and he keeps calling her by the wrong name. But he comes back for more ... Meanwhile, Trevor harbors a ...

71 pages

5 m, 6 w, 18 flexible or with doubling 3 m, 3 w

Snow day! In this collection of hilarious scenes we see how an unexpected day off from school can be an answer to a prayer…or not! Sweethearts Mark and Jessica aren’t feeling very sweet when, after a whole night of decorating the gym, the winter homecoming dance is canceled. Meanwhile, Paul is thrilled to get an invitation from Mary to go sledding, if only his overprotective mother will chill. Then there’s poor Julie – will she ever figure out how to get her tongue unstuck from the frozen flagpole? Woven throughout the many scenes, Trenton, a student, and Mr....