Scripts for school play??

Question

my drama class will be doing a play soon and we're still looking for a script! anyone know of one that would suit 10-15 characters, grade 11 kids - but preferably no swearing or anything in it to keep it family friendly :) it needs to be kinda short as well, maybe like half and hour, forty five minutes or something.

scripts or links to scripts would be muchly appreciated!!

Answer 1

look at Shakespeare plays. Macbeth is short we are doing that in school next month. :P  

Answer 2

Most standard plays are going to run between 90 minutes to 2 hours, quite similar to a movie.  Unfortunately (no offense to the woman above me), most Shakespeare plays will run even longer without significant cuts.

If you are willing to do a full-length show, there are innumerable ones with large casts that would be family friendly:

- Arsenic and Old Lace

- Anything by Kaufman & Hart (the writers for the Marx brothers)... they typically involve fast-paced comedy with an old-school flair, and many characters... titles from them include:

     - You can't take it with you

     - The man who came to dinner

     - Once in a lifetime (my personal favourite... brilliant!)

- Many Neil Simon plays:

     - Biloxi Blues I think has a large(r) cast

     - Rumors is a commonly done highschool show

If you are really set on doing a shorter play, then you're best bet is a One Act, and there are millions of one acts in circulation... Quite a few of them are continually performed in Highschools:

- The Actor's Nightmare (comedy) - published by http://www.groveatlantic.com/, search on Christopher Durang and select "Christopher Durang Explains It All For You"

-The Lottery (drama) - I actually directed this one in highschool and it's a wonderful script with a large cast, but I can't remember the publisher.  It's based on Shirely Jackson's short story.  The only info I could find on it was here, but I'm sure there's a publisher for it somewhere: http://www.theactingcompany.org/educatio...

- 15 minute Hamlet - brilliant short adaption of Hamlet from Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love).  I think total running time is around 25 minutes of memory serves. Available through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Fifteen-Minute-Ham...

Alternatively, you can go direct to the Publishers.  The 2 main publishers are:

http://www.samuelfrench.com/ - bad website, not easily searchable

http://www.dramatists.com/ - brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.  You search through there entire catalogue by length, number of men, number of woman and read a short description of each play.  Highly recommended.

Hope that helps, good luck. :)