Melodramas and Westerns

55 pages

2 m, 9 w, 10 flex. Possible extras and doubling.

It’s the year 1890 in Saddlesore City. The Carson Hotel is a fun place to hang your hat and jist have a good ole time with friends and neighbors - playin' cards, dancin', laughin',singin', gossipin' and…drinkin' sassafras root beer by the gallons! Well, that's the way it used to be when Charles was alive but now it's just a sorry-eyed, sad-faced, ghost of a place where even the spiders are bored out of their minds! Widow Henrietta has become overwhelmed with both the duties of hotelin' and tryin' to raise Liza and Skeeter. Her once happy attitude has now turn...

35 pages

14 parts. (with doubling 2 m, 1 w, 3 flexible)

Yazoo! Get ready for one tall tale of adventure as Sheriff Cyclone Malone must protect his town, Yazoo Junction, from evil pirates! The pirate captain, along with two bumbling crewmen, has somehow managed to build a submarine – with torpedoes! – and is sailing on the river outside of town. Cyclone’s gonna need help to deal with this problem. The sweet schoolmarm (and Cyclone’s gal) Cozy Dumond tries to get a message to the neighboring sheriff, but she is tricked by the disreputable Violent Lavender, captured and tied to the submarine’s periscope. Cyclone and ...

36 pages

3 m, 7 w

The fairy tales of Cinderella and Snow White are lassoed together in this high-kicking western melodrama! Goldie Miner had to give up her infant daughter, Ashabelle, 18 years ago to eke out a living panning for gold, but she thought she left her with a good family. Now she's returned with plenty of gold for her daughter but finds Ashabelle wears patched clothes and does all the stepfamily's chores. When Ashabelle isn't allowed to go to the ball, her mother fixes her right up, including a pair of new boots. The next morning Earnest Lee Feelgoode finds the bell...

51 pages

5 m, 5 w

Gideon Culpepper opens the Last Chance Inn and the guests pour in immediately! Dashing Horace Prickley agrees to help poor flower-peddler Flossie McDurdle become a lady, so she can win her heart’s true love, the spineless but wealthy Theodore Vanderthistle. Teddy’s scheming mother, Vedalia, has other plans though. She sends for Posey Lee Perriwinkle, a beautiful Southern belle who arrives via Pony Express as a mail-order bride. Unfortunately, Posey falls for Gideon instead. Meanwhile Horace finds that he is falling for Flossie and facing the dilemma of helpin...

80 pages

8 m, 12 w, extras

Zounds! It's the 25th century and that dastardly villain, Snivelling Snidely Backlash, is stealing a farm from some old people because he knows that under the soil there's some of the richest rocket fuel ever discovered. With it he can control the galaxy! Space Cadet Bob hopes to pay off the farm's mortgage with his latest invention, a rocket that goes sideways. Enter the lovely heroine, Rosa Budd, fresh from the Metropolis City Poor House and Collection Depot For Used Space Suits. Pity poor Rosa as she's tied to the rocket and almost launched to another plan...

42 pages

7 m, 9 w

Unlike most villains, who only have to fight a hero in trying to win the lovely lady, Egar Duntley has to face Miss Lil's whole boardinghouse full of zany characters. There are Miss Lil's mischievous little brothers who dislike him, the deaf lady who keeps staring at him, the men-hungry spinsters who are chasing him, and others. Even more laughs come from Della, Duntley's cleaning lady accomplice. She is chased by an old boarder and served some "fruit juice" which makes her stiff as a board - a part any comedic actress will love to get her teeth into. The her...

48 pages

3 m, 6 w

Aurelia Archibald, a Southern widow, and her four daughters are all that remain on Archibald Plantation when it is taken over by Union forces. Expecting Northerners to be heartless brutes, they are confounded when the Yankees treat them courteously. The villain of the piece – actually a villainess – is the beautiful but treacherous Gardenia Galsworthy. She is determined to save her plantation from destruction by revealing to the Yankees where the Archibalds have hidden their jewels. Little does she realize they are also hiding Beauregard Burnside, a Confedera...

54 pages

6 m, 6 w

Here's a fast-moving, fun-filled play that mixes melodramatics with show business. Sonny Nuggett, a young, handsome theatre student (the hero, of course!) tries to assemble a dance act to save his parents' failing restaurant in the Gold Country of Old Californy. Col. Questus Quantrell, a shady showman with hypnotic powers, appears with three clumsy dancing girls. He schemes to take over the café by plotting murder and cheating two old prospectors, Pa and his old partner, Fred, out of their newly re-found "lost" goldmine. Fred is the father of Cora, a beautifu...

25 pages

5 m, 6 w, 3 flexible, extras

How can one man, even if he is Dirty Dan, capture the whole Mountie Choral Society? Easy, when you know all the men snap to attention at the words, "Northwest Mounted Police!" Trouble is as deep as the snow for Louella Lovelace's wedding to Sgt. Richard Dobetter. In addition to Dirty Dan, who's disguised himself as the Abominable Snowman, wedding guests are falling into bear traps and the townspeople fall for rumor of a silver rush. The play ends with Dirty Dan serving as the flower girl in a tutu. About 30 minutes.

32 pages

4 m, 4 w, 3 boys, 2 girls

Freely adapted from Eliza Lee Follen's 19th century American play. Poor Widow Peck struggles to raise her youthful brood. Though out of money, food and places to turn for help, she is determined to have a Christmas pudding. As every effort ends in disappointment, she grows increasingly desperate until a mysterious stranger appears. This is a charming play with delightful characters and colorful dialect. The youngsters' ages are flexible.

33 pages

3 m, 7 w

Here's sparkling mellerdrammer that has more plot twists than a pretzel factory. The setting is a near-bankrupt photo studio in the Territory of Arizona, owned by Mrs. Paula Roid, a widow who divides her time between her sickbed and her lovely daughter, Aster, "the dainty darling of the darkroom." But several other Arizonians have their beady eyes on Miss Roid, including the dastardly Mayor Gobblecrud, who is also their landlord. Just when the situation is about to explode, a stagecoach arrives with several interesting characters, including Jacques-Louis Dagu...

44 pages

6 m, 2 w

Sweet and spunky Betsy Green takes care of her sister Gertrude as they eke out a living hunting mushrooms in the forests of the Northwest. It isn’t easy, especially since Gertrude lost her vision in the terrible fireworks explosion which killed their parents in Hong Kong years earlier. Since that time, a mad scientist, apparently under the spell of a mysterious Oriental cult, has been trying to kidnap Gertrude. When Betsy is momentarily distracted talking with Maurice, a handsome fruit vendor, Gertrude disappears! The lost Gertrude rings a bell to indicate he...

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...

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.

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...