Full Length (1-10 Actors)

70 pages

4 m, 5 w, 1 flexible, optional 1 boy

Armed with a sharply judgmental attitude and a pair of binoculars, homeowner Leona Crump is consumed with anxiety over her new neighbors. Will they be California beatniks? Or paroled drug pushers? Or more frightening yet, perhaps someone with children?! Her worst fears are realized when an odd-ball "hill-folk" family move in across the street. She quickly realizes that neither God, nor her favorite telephone psychic, has prepared her for the series of showdowns set to take place in her living room. Gafina Hambefferschmidt, an obnoxious, gum-chewing woman, tog...

60 pages

Flexible cast (minimum 6)

Ever wonder why people whistle in a graveyard? Because it scares away the bogeyman. Here's a little gang of stories that, far from scaring the bogeyman away, invites him in and sets a place for him at the table! Listen, gentle reader, while the Caretaker introduces spooky tales from the haunted graveyard that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat and sometimes have you laughing out loud when some of the spectres don't behave exactly as they should. Watch as one couple decides what to do with an old uncle who vowed he'd come back from the dead, and wa...

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,...

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 ...

68 pages

Flexible cast (40+) to a minimum of six (4 m, 2 w)

Beguiled in early childhood by his nursemaid's grim and ghoulish stories, Charles Dickens harbored all through his life a fascination with ghosts, apparitions and chilling coincidence. This play is a collection of eerie tales from the greatest storyteller of all. The stories are a lively mixture of comedy, pathos, and the supernatural and include: "The Signal-man," "The Bagman's Uncle," "The Letter From Afar," "Trial for Murder," "The Queer Chair," "Sisters From Perth," "The Portrait Painter," and "The Lawyer and the Ghost." These stories are perfect as a new...

43 pages

4 w, 4 m for small cast; 8 w, 7 m, 2 flexible for large cast

Melisande dreams of catching a unicorn, Ana dreams of capturing the perfect sunrise, River dreams of finding the all-consuming love of his life, while Kristi seeks to unlock her love. These are just a few of the stories of love lost and found in “A Day of Dreaming.” We meet young people with powerful dreams which they write in a Dream Journal that is nestled in a covered bridge (which exists today in Winterset, Iowa). There is always the hope that if they write down their dreams, they will come to fruition. The stories run the gamut from forging new connectio...

75 pages

1 m, 3 w and flexible extras

Miss Ida Ingram's dying wish was to have her ashes scattered over the Grand Canyon - no small request for the two remaining sisters, Isabelle and Imogene, as they are elderly and have never before ventured out of South Carolina. Into the picture comes a long-lost nephew, Brandon, who agrees to drive his maiden aunts to Arizona to give himself time to think through his own mid-life crisis. Leigh Ann, a young neighbor woman who was practically raised by the elderly triplets, soon catches up and joins them on this incredible trip where they meet everyone from a ...

44 pages

Minimum 2 m, 7 w; maximum 3 m, 12 w, 1 flexible

Getting old feels like the end … especially for Margo. She’s worked hard to build her career and her life with husband Lars. But her 30th birthday isn’t what she planned. Already late to her own party, she and Lars quickly eat the last of the food before greeting guests. In hindsight, the crab salad may have been a little off … Apparently WAY off! Now they must start over in the after-life. But before they can rest in peace they must find a house and help the occupants. With the help of a celestial guide, they view three houses. There’s the far-out beach bung...

74 pages

5 m, 6 w

"I wasn't expecting anything to happen," intones detective Ace Baxter, "and that's just when anything CAN happen!" And happen it does, as Ace finds himself in a locked room standing in front of the only exit with a murder victim who was shot in the back ... and with Ace's own pistol. Shadows loom large when you're on the lam, as Ace finds out, whether he's disguising himself as a cleaning woman to inspect the scene of the crime, or ducking Sergeant Flint, who's chomping at the bit to clamp the cuffs on Baxter. The Professor helps out when he can, vowing to al...

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...

68 pages

6 m, 5 w

WHAM! The Masked Wonder leaps into the room and fights off four or five henchmen without even wrinkling his cape and then...? Then the Hollywood writers of the Majestic Film Studios have to figure out what he does next. Pop, Tiger Lil, Stu, Howard and Dena are stuck until they meet the latest addition to their writer's stable. "Like any of us are writers," says Howard, "or stable." As the new kid on the team, Freddie has a lot to prove, mostly to his overbearing mother. Does he give up and leave with Mom? No chance! Especially not with Dena around! These two ...

54 pages

3 m, 5 w, 1 flexible

Janet has come up with the excuse of a party to relieve the tensions between their two trigonometry study groups. During the party the kids play a murder game, pretending that their trigonometry teacher is the victim. The students become edgy because of the parallels between their characters and themselves. All calm is shattered when word comes that their trigonometry teacher actually has been murdered! Everyone has a theory about who killed the teacher. Amidst the finger pointing and scrambling for alibis, "evidence" shows up in bookbags, and friends become ...

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 ...

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...

62 pages

Flexible cast minimum 4 (3 m, 1 w) maximum 37 (28 m, 9 w)

Here are ten short views of turn-of-the-century New York through the eyes of O. Henry, the master of the twist ending and chronicler of everyday people from young shop girls with enormous dreams to the ne'er-do-wells with plans for the easy life. Among the people you'll come to know and almost love are: three of the dingiest and laziest musketeers you've ever seen, plotting to relieve a hard-working wife of a whole dollar she earned scrubbing clothes; a young gentleman with a sudden insurmountable problem in giving away a "mere one-thousand-dollar" inheritanc...