One-Act Plays

26 pages

1 m, 5 w, 1 flexible, extras and audience members

Rick, an intelligent ninth grade student athlete, has his first sexual encounter with Amanda, a senior. He has four more relationships before he graduates. By the spring of his senior year, when he tests HIV positive, he has inadvertently exposed more than fifty of his classmates to AIDS. That number has little impact on most audiences until the end of the play when fifty audience members are called to the stage from the names on cards they are handed. When the name on the card is read by the actor playing the doctor, the audience member holding the card shou...

39 pages

5 m, 6 w, 2 flexible

Here’s unconventional, humorous, and easy-to-stage treatment of the famous fairy tale. Rather than one huge ball to find his future Princess, the Prince has met eligible ladies of the kingdom at smaller, separate gatherings called “Choose a Princess Parties.” Now, after 118 parties, where the Prince has danced with “364 clods,” the Zanzibany family has finally received its invitation. The formidable sisters Wartzella and Bageena, along with their domineering mother, go to the party escorted by Cinderella’s meek father and their clumsy farmhand. Cinderella is ...

21 pages

4 m, 3 w

Poe's familiar story is updated here, set in the modern American judicial system. As part of a competency hearing to determine the suspect's mental ability to stand trial, the caged murderer faces a panel of legal and psychological experts as his confession is videotaped for all to see. As the experts probe deeper into the killer's psyche, the apparently motiveless murder starts to come into focus and we discover the victim's "evil eye" was just the tip of the iceberg. One interior set. (Excerpted from the full-length play, "Fright Night." Please state adapto...

35 pages

7 m, 9 w

Members of the Dream Big Society are meeting in Hawaii's Paradise Hotel for the fourth annual convention, where they can find motivation to achieve their personal dreams, no matter how impossible they may seem. And wild dreams they are: Yvonne wants to be the Queen of England, CJ wants to be a samurai, Dora wants to train dolphins even though she can't swim, and Cory wants to be a rock star, though he can't sing a note or even play the air guitar. Clare, whose only dream is to have a happy family, discovers and is befriended by the society after being jilted ...

28 pages

6 w, 11 flex

Bethany, a stressed out student, is trying to complete a school project with two less-than-helpful classmates. The three students are taken by surprise when Bethany’s phone and all of its widgets come to life. The trio soon finds themselves trapped inside of a bizarre video game filled with talking widgets, not-so-magical creatures, and a friendly chicken. Can they beat the game, return to reality, and learn how to work together more effectively along the way?

39 pages

4 m, 5 w

Laura has carefully plotted a day off school in order to find out the meaning of life. Playing hooky, along with her ditzy best friend, she has concocted a foolproof plan to get to the bottom of things. Chaos ensues when her attempts to leave the house are foiled by a lazy cable guy, a rapper who's come to install high-speed internet, a disapproving Mary Kay consultant, a devious Girl Scout selling cookies, and an insecure FedEx driver. It seems all is lost until Laura's older brother arrives with a man claiming to be Leonardo Da Vinci. He, too, knows the sec...

28 pages

5-6 m, 4 w, optional extras

The Imarovas were once the royal family and held sway over the social and political arenas of the country. But a new regime gained power and the Imarova children became captives in their own home. They live under a repressive guard, yet each sibling remembers or knows a different kind of love: romantic love, paid love, love of a child and pet, and most of all, Anabella’s childlike, colorful love of life itself. It is only their family wealth and figurehead status that keep them from joining the work colonies. Today is Anabella’s fourteenth birthday and as the...

46 pages

12 to 20+ flexible characters

Here's an enjoyable, approachable introduction to William Shakespeare. In Scenes 1 through 4, we discover his world and his realities, his life and his times. In Scenes 5, 6 and 7, we are treated to one abridged scene from "Romeo and Juliet" and two abridged scenes from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." All together, the man and his work come alive for both the actor and for the audience. Performance time about an hour. (A longer version of this play, "The Bard!", also includes abridged scenes from "The Twelfth Night," "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Macbeth." S...

36 pages

2 Actors

David Radman, a young journalist, must write a story about The Vaudeville Theatre, which has recently been designated for destruction.  He reluctantly arrives at the building for an appointment with the President of the Theatre Rescue Society, but is instead greeted by Charles Grimm, the janitor.  Grimm shows Radman the magic of theatre.  During a series of theatrical explorations—in which they dance a soft-shoe, eat lunch on the backdrop, explore the props cabinet, and fence—Grimm and Radman peel away years of heartache and ang...

18 pages

5 m, 2 w, 6 teen boys (Some male roles can be played by females)

Imagine this: A high school P.E. teacher who does not have a gym facility for his students, and a high school drama teacher who has it all and wants more! Mr. John Brief's proposal to the school administrators for the construction of a gym, and Mr. Lawrence Hacker's proposal for additional seating for his very extravagant theater takes an interesting turn!

38 pages

4 m, 3 w

Philip, the Stone Age lord of an elegant cave suite, is something of a Neanderthal when it comes to change. Rumors of a new secret weapon worry him. So does the alarmingly barbaric tribe that has settled across the river who live in boxes made of wooden logs with a panel that opens and closes! Then there's his son, Thomas, who has dropped out of hunting-fishing-agriculture school and does nothing but play with inventions. His daughter, Sharon, befriends animals instead of attracting a nice caveman who will carry her off to a decent cavern in a good neighborho...

29 pages

2 m, 2 w, 3 flexible

Adapted from the story "Peter Rugg, the Missing Man" by William Austin. This play tells the story of the phantom coachman Peter Rugg, a man doomed forever to race along the roads to Boston but never to arrive there. Overtaken by a fit of rage while traveling during a stormy night, Bostonite Peter Rugg made a dangerous promise: "Let the storm increase! I will see home tonight in spite of the tempest, or may I never see home again!" He never arrived in Boston. Now his ghost rides the roads leading to and from that city, and he always brings behind him the feroc...

16 pages

3 m, 3 w

Shelby has been feeling depressed and seeing her grandmother in constant pain has upset her even more. Finally, she decides to steal two bottles of her grandmother's pain pills and commit suicide. But Grandma finds the pills and confronts Shelby - admitting that her age and illness have caused her to consider overdosing on the pills herself. Horrified, Shelby realizes she has her whole life ahead of her and both recommit to life.

32 pages

7 m

Jabez Wilson is a pawnbroker whose store is located on Coburg Square next to a bank. He consults Sherlock Holmes about the "League of Red-Headed Men." He had been told by his employee, Vincent Spaulding, that it is a group established by a red-headed American millionaire, now dead, who had left a large amount of money for men with such hair color. Spaulding introduced Wilson to Duncan Ross who is also red-headed and the manager of the operation. All Wilson needed to do to earn the money was to spend four hours a day at an office, copying out the Encyclopedia ...

24 pages

4 main characters, additional cast of 13 or more.

In this new version of the fairy tale, all the characters are likable - the greedy king is now a kind ruler looking for money to save endangered species and the passive young woman who must spin straw into gold is resourceful and self-reliant. Even the funny little character, whose name reflects his rap-style speech, is likable, just lonely. Luckily, the Hunters-of-the Perfect-Wave help the play have a happy ending.