School

60 pages

7 m, 5 w, many supporting roles and extras, doubling possible

The Dumas classic “The Three Musketeers,” set in 17th century France, tells of the adventures of three heroic musketeers who are close comrades. This, sadly, is not a dramatization of that beloved story. Instead it’s a prequel…of sorts. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are in training to become musketeers, and they are bumbling rivals, casting humorously snide remarks to each other and practicing outlandish one-upmanship. When the queen is abducted under their watch, they each try to find a way to save her and save the throne. Their attempts land them in a laughing...

50 pages

5-9 m, 7-8 w, 9-12 flex, extras and doubling possible

There’s something in the water at George Washington School. Literally. A truck carrying sodium pentothal – a chemical also known as “truth serum” – has crashed into the local lake and spilled its cargo into the drinking water, and now everyone in school can’t help telling the truth. Teachers are fighting, parents are pouting, kids are confessing their crimes, and the school’s beloved Principal Van Vleck has gone missing. Paulie, Tibby, Seth and Analise are getting ready to compete in the school’s Olympic Mind Games as Team Electricity. The competition is in j...

28 pages

(13 - 24 total. 2 m; 5 w; 6 - 17 flexible with doubling.)

Courtney Hanson, high school junior and avid protester, claims that her high school has turned athletics into a religion, violating the separation of church and state. After numerous meetings with the hapless school principal Courtney and her mother have decided to sue the school district. The characters interact in a series of scenes at the school, at a sports fundraiser, and at a PTO meeting. Some say Courtney has finally gone around the bend, while others say it’s high time someone stood up for academics and the arts....

29 pages

5 m, 3 w, 1 flexible

William Shakespeare retired at about age 48. Why did this prolific genius stop writing? How did he get along with his long-neglected wife, Anne, once he gave up the stage? “The Shakespeares” imagines what The Bard’s last years were like in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play is full of inside jokes for Shakespeare fans. But even for those unfamiliar with his plays, there are laughs (and a few tears) as we watch this profoundly mismatched couple try to make a go of it. Shakespeare’s confidante, daughter Susanna, realizes that her father’s creative spirit is being cr...

24 pages

5 m, 3 w, and ensemble

Hassan works as a scholar in the House of Wisdom specializing in translating legends. She spends her days alongside her father and twin. Together they are all living a dangerous secret. It is 13th century Bagdad at the height of Islamic civilization and women are forbidden in the House of Wisdom, so Hassan and her sister are posing as men. The daughters are living a protected and peaceful life, yet Hassan dreams of travelling the world. The arrival of a new scholar expands Hassan’s horizons, but will he jeopardize her secret identity as well as her future? Wh...

36 pages

4 m, 4 w

Duke Deadheader, the most rotten rascal on the railroad, plots to relieve the simple but honest stationmaster, Ralph Roundhouse, of the company's construction funds. Aided by his beautiful, but nasty, accomplice, Flora Flagstop, he burns down the lumber mill of our hero, Stanley Studmill, cons Ralph into signing a worthless contract for ties (Ralph thought they were railroad ties), and kidnaps our heroine Rebecca Roundhouse. All appears lost, but Duke has not reckoned with the mysterious Chinese foreman, Gan Dee, nor the ever-reliable Boxcar Betsy and her cou...

59 pages

Flexible cast of 21 (from 12 m, 9 w to 7 m, 14 w)

Maxwell the Magnificent, the famous magician, has just completed a gruelling world tour. His entire production company has returned to Max's private island estate to collect final paychecks and head for home. It is here, while checking over props, that Max comes to the reluctant realization that his continuous bad luck on tour was by design. Someone has been sabotaging his act! It's hard to guess who it might be because as the faithful butler intones, "To know Max is to loathe him." So Max and a police-inspector friend arrange a special command performance wh...

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...

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

14 speaking roles, extras

Here's Romeo and Juliet, along with Hamlet and Ophelia, updated as today's high school campus personalities! Written in couplets, the ferocious rhymes create much of the humor. With its nice mix of characters, the high school faculty will even want to join in the performances. The script also includes many opportunities to insert local information and take jabs at rival schools, making your performance unique to your school and magnifying the fun. Split stage and pantomime scenes help keep the play moving, and there's room for creative staging and slapstick. ...

67 pages

15 m, 13 w, 7 flexible, extras, doubling possible

Adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens. A coming-of-age story of a boy in 19th century. A young hero battling a difficult youth, we see David's struggles from his childhood days at the family's estate in Blunderstone, to his early life of poverty and misery, to his final, joyful success. Many of our favorite Dickens' characters are present: David's gentle mother, Clara; the loving housekeeper, Peggoty; his cruel stepfather, Murdstone; his schoolmates Steerforth and Traddles; the amusing, ever-on-the-run Micawbers; the lovely Agnes Wickfield, and the despic...

29 pages

4 m, 4 w (all teen roles)

It’s Steph’s high school graduation party. Her friends are all around, her family will be back shortly, and she is supposed to be adding the final touches to the house. But this “commencement” is anything but easy or simple. She and her boyfriend Brandon have news that will devastate her father, has already caused an upheaval with her mother and sister, and will no doubt upset her best friend Gina’s careful plans. Everyone has an opinion about what Steph should do, but naturally everyone tells her it’s “her decision.” As the news filters through her network o...

38 pages

2 m, 4 w, 2 flex and optional extras

Every day, we make a thousand choices that might not seem important at the time, but who knows which one has the potential to change the course of our entire life? Three high school friends, Summer, Victoria and Ariel, are simply choosing a place to eat that night, but where they end up might set their futures on very different paths. Explore four possible scenarios springing from the same mundane decision in this comedy/drama about friendship, destiny, and the surprises life has to offer.

20 pages

3 m, 2 w, 2 flexible

An ideal version for introducing younger audiences to one of Shakespeare's best-known comedies. A narrator helps keep the action going and explains some lesser known words. The story, of course, is this: Petruchio, who wants a rich wife, marries Katharina, "the shrew." Then he has to tame her. And that he does by spirit, good-nature, and wit. The holy terror is subdued but perhaps Katharina saw in Petruchio what she liked in a man and allowed herself to be tamed. This is a loud and energetic romp from beginning to end. Can be presented with a detailed or simp...

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...