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High School

Plays for High School Theatre Students to Perform

A large selection of more than 60 plays for High School Theatre that include comedies, dramas, short playsfull-length plays and farces. All written to draw teen students into engaging stories they will enjoy acting in and performing for the school show. Discover short plays for high schoolers, comedy plays, dramas, dramedies, farces, plays with contemporary issues, scripts with historical themes.

  • ROBERT ARTHUR'S EASTERN SHORE by Robert P. Arthur, twice nominated for Virginia's Poet Laureate: The book includes 4 one-act plays,  a selection of his award-winning poems, and "Hymn to the Chesapeake," a play with music. The culture of the Eastern Shore watermen and waterwomen has long been threatened by the erosion of winds off the Chesapeake Bay and a dwindling supply of crabs and "ersters" to be harvested.  These poems and plays celebrate that life and allow us, to share the triumph and the pain of finding one's livelihood and reason for being in an environment that is both beautiful and unforgiving.
  • This adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” by Robyn Hilt reduces the original but retains the major plot points and beauty of the poetry. A great choice for classroom presentation. All of the major scenes and plot points are intact, as well as the humor of the Nurse and Mercutio. Students take one role and develop that character through analyzing motives and decisions.
  • RTFM

    $8.00$35.00
    A lighter & comedic version of "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, where Major Tom is not as prepared as he should be because he doesn't Read The Freakin' Manual (RTFM), as Ground Control nags him to do.
  • 4 skilfully adapted plays for young audiences: Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, A Midnight Summer's Dream, and Macbeth. Plays are each around 45 to 50 minutes, are fast-paced, engaging, and make the language more accessible to young audiences, while including both Shakespeare’s original language and theatrical devices. As exciting participatory theater they appeal to elementary school students. With the participatory elements removed, each play's frame story is producible as a play for teens or for teen drama groups to perform for a younger audience.
  • She’ll Find Her Way Home

    $13.70$110.00
    A full-length, African-American, post-Civil War drama. The only child of a deceased well-heeled Mississippi slaveholder. Martha Robb views her coming of age full of the adolescent longings and unending horizons promised by the victorious Union Army. and her quadroon complexion. She and her companion, Thomas, could forge different lives, lives absent of the old barriers … if they could only get past her mother.
  • A collection of six 10-minute satires - plays written by the renowned Virginia Playwrights Forum, lampoons the American political and social landscape. From taxes and lotteries, to classroom education and TV talk show hosts, the foibles of present-day America are revealed.
  • This collection of over 50 poems has all of Robert P. Arthur's skill and lovely, rhythmical language, but also a sense of loss of both life and love, the former viewed with both curiosity and indifference, the latter producing some of the author’s most moving love poems. The sea is. however, ever-present, just like in his other works.
  • Sniper

    $13.70$160.00
    Award-winning full-length drama for 8-10 actors, SNIPER is very loosely based upon the nation's first school shooting in 1975. The drama explores the mind and life of seventeen year old Anthony Vaccaro, who fatally shoots 9 citizens of a small town in upstate New York. Moving back and forth in time, Vaccaro searches his own past and remembers.... Great for high school, college, and community theater and discussion groups.
  • Talk the Night

    $8.00$35.00
    Together, Drake and his grandfather, the dynamic vocal duo, broadcast call-in segments about aliens, werewolves, and all things crypto-zoological, but this particular show is about “time”: lost time, time outs, moments that feel like years,
  • In Ten After Ten, Jack J. Berry uses unique settings to highlight current problems and issues. These short comedies can be performed as a single evening or used separately as part of a larger presentation to underscore a point. Excellent for classroom, church, or senior facility.
  • The Art of the Duel

    $8.00$35.00
    A comedic look at what DUELING would be like if it were legal in the 21st century. The arbiter continues to have a thankless task.
  • The Boarding House

    $7.95$50.00
    A one-act play, The Boarding House is a dramatic satire, by David.H. Klein, of the story by James Joyce. Mrs. Mooney, the owner of a boarding house of questionable reputation, exploits the wiles of her daughter Polly and the power of the Church to snare one of her more respectable boarders as her potential son-in-law.
  • The Canterbury Tales

    $13.70$170.00
    This full-length comedy play with music brings rapid-fire dialogue to an old classic.  With a flexible cast, it is an excellent play for high school performances, college theaters, or community productions.  Elvgren has selected the bawdiest and most satirical tales for this version.  A sense of Chaucer's language is maintained but is made accessible to a modern audience. (Lead sheets available)
  • A tribute to Dr. Seuss and a parody of "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back", where Nick & Sally are savvy enough to call Social Services to deal with both The Cat and the pink snow that he created.
  • The Crying Tree

    $13.70$125.00
    A stunning drama with wonderful comic scenes, which received a special mention in the 2019 ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition. The story: in 2018, a black Congressman is caught up in a Trump impeachment battle and the alt right. Two hundred years earlier at the same plantation home, a slave is deciding whether to escape. Two parallel stories show how much has and hasn't changed about race and politics in America.
  • The Dead

    $13.70$145.00

    A one-act play adapted from "The Dead" in James Joyce’s “Dubliners”

    During an annual Christmas celebration, Gabriel Conroy has to cope with his doddering aunts, discover the true nature of his relationship with his wife, Gretta, and confront his own academic pedantry.  He condescends to the provincialism of his friends, family, and his wife. But a big surprise about Gretta awaits him after he retires for the night.

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