Best One Act Plays

Home of the most popular one-act plays for student actors, Playscripts, Inc. presents 15 of their very best short comedies. From a blind dating debacle to a silly Shakespeare spoof, from a fairy tale farce to a self-hating satire, this anthology contains hilarious large-cast plays that have delighted thousands of audiences around the world. Includes the plays The Audition by Don Zolidis, Law & Order: Fairy Tale Unit by Jonathan Rand, 13 Ways to Screw Up Your College Interview by Ian McWethy, Darcy's Cinematic Life by Christa Crewdson, The Whole Shebang by Rich Orloff, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Fifth Period by Jason Pizzarello, Small World by Tracey Scott Wilson, The Absolute Most Cliched Elevator Play in the History of the Entire Universe by Werner Trieschmann, The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet by Peter Bloedel, Show and Spell by Julia Brownell, Cut by Ed Monk, Check Please by Jonathan Rand, Aliens vs. Cheerleaders by Qui Nguyen, The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon by Don Zolidis, 15 Reasons Not To Be in a Play by Alan Haehnel

Filled with wry, dark humor, unparalleled imagination, unforgettable characters, and exquisitely crafted storytelling, Sam Shepard’s plays have earned him enormous acclaim over the past five decades. In these fifteen one-acts, we see him at his best, displaying his trademark ability to portray human relationships, love, and lust with rare authenticity. These fifteen furiously energetic plays confirm Shepard's status as our most audacious living playwright, unafraid to set genres and archetypes spinning with results that are utterly mesmerizing. Included in this volume: Ages of the Moon Evanescence; Shakespeare in the Alley Short Life of Trouble The Unseen Hand The Rock Garden Chicago Icarus’s Mother 4H Club Fourteen Hundred Thousand Red Cross Cowboys #2 Forensic & The Navigators The Holy Ghostly Back Bog Beast Bait Killer’s Head

MEATLOAF IN THE MOONLIGHT by David Gallic. Every family has skeletons in their closet. These skeletons are coming out to play. CLAP ON, CLAP OFF by Aiden Levy. A sexually frustrated adolescent tries to lose his virginity to his wholesome girlfriend when his grandmother leaves for a Mensa trip and entrusts him to water her plants. ANYONE, ANYWHERE by Amanda Fleming. Love can happen to anyone, anywhere. BABE, INC. by Rosemary Zibart. In the year 2108, men can order robotic women as mates, but due to a snafu in the system, a real woman gets substituted for a robotic Babe to accompany a man to his mothers funeral. The results are a little haywire. PEAR by Carol Paik. Husband and wife grapple with the incessant problem of what to do about dinner. Other plays include: THE PARKING LOT by Holly Hunt, BLUE STREAK by Carston Turner, STEEL OR PRETZELS by Mara Gilbert, JUMP by Josh Sohn, DAILY SOUNDS by Jay Prasad, FREE COUNTRY by Steve Monarque, THE SEED by David Pumo, and THIS BASEMENT by Bethann Snow.

FOOTHOLD by Patrick J. Lennon. A goofy Mary Poppins-ish nurse treats a shy man with an ingrown toenail and a broken heart. WRITERS RETREAT by Samantha Ciavarella. Things get messy when youre the subject of your own story. Two friends/lovers/writers realize quickly that they cannot have their cake and eat it too. A SONG A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY by Freddy Valle. A play about an ailment so embarrassing, you wouldnt tell your Mom about it. Say Aahhh. WHERES THE REST OF ME? By David E. Tolchinsky. A screenwriter wrestles with his relationship to Spalding Gray, his psychiatrist father and the classic movie, Kings Row. A dark and funny journey through movies, monologues and mental illness. KIDS THESE DAYS by Rachel Robyn Wagner. Like the Brady Bunch . . . Only with drugs, alcohol, sex, and most of all honesty. HOPELESS, IRRESISTIBLE by Keaton Weiss. Two strangers meet at a mysterious train station in an ambiguous afterlife. Other plays include: HOMECARE by Phoebe Farber, THE EXIT INTERVIEW by Betsy Kagen & MK Walsh, PAULA'S VISITOR by Keith Filangieri and ABRAMOVIC by Kory French. As middle America continues with its economic struggles, a MOMA visiting Midwestern twenty-something tries to understand the monetary value of high-art, grounding his friend in the process.

This one act play is made available to all. It may be used freely to perform in any environment. No Royalties owed. You do not have to buy multiple copies to perform, copy this book. You may change lines and scenes. Please give credit to the original author as inspiration of the work.The elder Dumas, who wrote many successful plays, as well as the famous romances, said that all he needed for constructing a drama was "four boards, two actors, and a passion." What he meant by passion has been defined by a later French writer, Ferdinand Brunetière, as a conflict of wills. When two strong desires conflict and we wonder which is coming out ahead, we say that the situation is dramatic. This clash is clearly defined in any effective play, from the crude melodrama in which the forces are hero and villain with pistols, to such subtle conflicts, based on a man's misunderstanding of even his own motives and purposes.In comedy, and even in farce, struggle is clearly present. Here our sympathy is with people who engage in a not impossible combat—against rather obvious villains who can be unmasked, or against such public opinion or popular conventions as can be overset. The hold of an absurd bit of gossip upon stupid people is firm enough in "Spreading the News"; but fortunately it must yield to facts at last. The Queen and the Knave of Hearts are sufficiently clever, with the aid of the superb cookery of the Knave's wife, to do away with an ancient and solemnly reverenced law of Pompdebile's court.Again, in comedies as in mathematics, the problem is often solved by substitution. The soldier in Mr. Galsworthy's "The Sun" is able to find a satisfactory and apparently happy ending without achieving what he originally set out to gain. Or the play which does not end as the chief character wishes may still prove not too serious because, as in "Fame and the Poet," the situation is merely inconvenient and absurd rather than tragic. Now and then it is next to impossible to tell whether the ending is tragic or not. It is natural for us to desire a happy ending in stories, as we desire satisfying solutions of the problems in our own lives. And whenever the forces at work are such as make it true and possible, naturally this is the best ending for a story or a play. Where powerful and terrible influences have to be combated, only a poor dramatist will make use of mere chance, or compel his characters to do what such people really would not do, to bring about a factitious "happy ending." One of the best ways to understand these as real stage plays is through some sort of dramatization. This does not mean, however, that they need be produced with elaborate scenery and costumes, memorizing, and rehearsal; often the best understanding may be secured by quite informal reading in the class, with perhaps a hat and cloak and a lath sword or two for properties. With simply a clear space in the classroom for a stage, you and your imaginations can give all the performance necessary for realizing these plays very well indeed. Of course, you must clearly understand the lines and the play as a whole before you try to take a part, so that you can read simply and naturally, as you think the people in the story probably spoke. Some questions for discussion in the appendix may help you in talking the plays over in class or in reading them for yourself before you try to take a part. You will find it sometimes helps, also, to make a diagram or a colored sketch of the scene as the author describes it, or even a small model of the stage for a "dramatic museum" for your school. If you have not tried this, you do not know how much it helps in seeing plays of other times, like Shakespeare's or Molière's; and it is useful also for modern dramas. Such small stages can be used for puppet theatres as well. "The Knave of Hearts" is intended as a marionette play, and other dramas—Maeterlinck's and even Shakespeare's—have been given in this way with very interesting effects.

The one-act play stands apart as a distinct art form with some well known writers providing specialist material, among them Bernard Shaw, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill. Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Albee and Tennesee Williams. There are also lesser-known writers with plenty of material to offer, yet sourcing one-act plays to perform is notoriously hard. This companion is the first book to survey the work of over 250 playwrights in an illuminating A-Z guide. Multiple styles, nationalities and periods are covered, offering a treasure trove of compelling moments of theatre waiting to be discovered. Guidance on performing and staging one-act plays is also covered as well as essential contact information and where to apply for performance rights. A chapter introducing the history of the one-act play rounds off the title as a definitive guide.

These short plays by the great Danish-Norwegian playwright Ludvig Holberg reveal, in brilliant and sparking miniature, his genius for comedy. The plays are here translated into English for the first time, with an introduction by Svend Kragh-Jacobsen, well-known Danish theater critic. In these social comedies Holberg pricks the vanity of snobbery and the worship of riches, deals with the world of the philosophers, and has fun with the theme of common sense. A talkative barber, a scientific charlatan, and an ignorant farmer boy come in for sharp characterization. Originally published in 1950. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.