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| A Thirty-Minute Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare, abridged Bill Tordoff |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 8. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 16. Minimum total without doubling = 16. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 35 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Abridgement of William Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew', with the original text of two hours and more cut down to 30 minutes.
(The abridgement is copyrighted, so we charge for scripts and copying rights, but performances are royalty-free.) |
| Synopsis | A lord wishes his daughters to be married. Bianca is young and beautiful and already has many suitors, but Katherina is strong-willed, hot-tempered and uncontrollable. Their father decrees that Bianca may only take a husband once Katherina is married. Lucentio and his friend Petruchio arrive, and Petruchio is convinced to marry Katherina for her money to allow Lucentio to wed Bianca. However, Lucentio finds his marriage to Bianca is not as idyllic as he would like, whilst Petruchio bends the shrew-like Katherina to his will. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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| Three Little Words by Jamesine Cundell Walker |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 7. Minimum total without doubling = 13. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 75 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A collection of eight short plays, loosely on the theme of love. Multiple settings, but simple sets requiring just furniture (and not much of that). |
| Synopsis | Malcolm and Karen find themselves trapped in the office storeroom.
Ken and disillusioned Brian reminisce about life, comedy duos, and lost loves.
Elderly Marjorie has lost interest and decided to spend her life in bed.
Overbearing Rosie drops off daughter Florence at the start of her first Oxford term.
Graham's ex-wife appears at his mother's funeral.
Teenager Alex gets talking to elderly Gladys in a hospital waiting room.
Despite Danni's encouragement, Jo is reluctant to look at the results of her pregnancy test.
Malcolm hopes to appear at the wedding of his ex-girlfriend, but her sister has something to say about it. (Featuring returning characters from three previous scenes.) |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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A Train Ride Away by Frank Gibbons
Performance by Aiken High won The Garcia Theater Project, North Augusta 2010. |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 10. Chorus. Characters are mainly adults with one young child. Could all be played by children. The chorus is optional, but there are several scenes where crowds would create atmosphere. |
| Run Time | Around 35 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | One-act play. Intended to have figurative sets (possibly just lighting transitions), rather than realistic depictions of the locations. Props could be real or indicated by mime. Includes mild swearing. |
| Synopsis | The story of a family of Hungarian Jews being transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the holocaust of 1944. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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| Twist by Geoff Bamber |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 6. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 16. Minimum total without doubling = 22. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 55 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Whirlwind adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist as a one-act comedy for kids. |
| Synopsis | Wide-eyed innocent Oliver progresses from orphanage to workhouse to den of thieves to prison cell and then back onto the mean streets as a fugitive, and not only from the law. No matter, things can only get better, can't they? Even the ever-optimistic Oliver is beginning to have doubts about that. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Feedback | Click here to find out what other customers said about this script. |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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| Two Gentlemen of Verona by Geoff Bamber |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 6. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 14. Minimum total without doubling = 16. No chorus. Flexible numbers of soldiers and outlaws |
| Run Time | Around 45 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A humorous retelling of Shakespeare's story as a modern-language one-act play. |
| Synopsis | When Proteus follows his best friend Valentine to fashionable Milan, he finds himself attracted to the Duke of Milan's daughter, Silvia, upon whom Valentine has already set his sights. Hatching a plot to remove Valentine from the scene and move in on Silvia, he does not realise that he is being followed by Julia, the girl he left behind in Verona and to whom he has sworn everlasting devotion. Will the faithless scoundrel succeed with Silvia or will his efforts founder? A no-brainer, really. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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| Two Weddings and a Conference by Karen Doling |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 6. Minimum total with doubling = 12. Minimum total without doubling = 12. No chorus. Eleven speaking roles and an unspeakable photographer. |
| Run Time | Around 65 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Comedy play. Single (hotel reception) set. Structurally in two acts, but in length it's on the boundary between a one-act and a two-act (it could occupy a whole evening's theatre or be accompanied by a shorter piece.) Contains mild swearing. |
| Synopsis | A double-booked wedding reception at a hotel causes havoc for the brides, grooms, manager, receptionist, and the attendees of a conference that is supposed to be happening at the same time! However, it soon transpires that the double-booking is not the only coincidence they will have to deal with. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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Underground by Jon Boustead
Production by Tykes won Best Youth Production (Teignmouth Drama Festival, 2017) |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 11. Minimum total with doubling = 14. Minimum total without doubling = 14. No chorus. All cast should be of same or similar age. |
| Run Time | Around 22 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A one act thriller for youth theatre, with a single - crashed Tube train carriage - setting. |
| Synopsis | A group of youth-age children on a school outing are left to fend for themselves, as they find themselves trapped in a crashed tube train and their teachers are nowhere to be found. They all have to deal with the horror in their own way and they take the plot along through intermittent narration and action. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Awards | Click here to see the awards won by (productions of) this script. |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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| A Universal Sorrow by Graham J Evans |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 10. Minimum total without doubling = 12. No chorus. Ten on-stage roles plus two offstage voices. |
| Run Time | Around 40 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Powerful, emotional one-act drama about a Welsh mining disaster in 1913. |
| Synopsis | Warning signs of an impending disaster are ignored by the mine owners and the colliers are left to deal with the consequences of over 400 of their colleagues, including a 14 year old boy, being trapped underground. The effect on the community of Senghenydd is poignantly brought to life as rescue attempts proceed. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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Urban Hymns by Keith Badham
Performance by Up-Stage Theatre Company won Best Youth Actress award in the Bedfordshire One Act Play Festival, 2011 |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 65. No chorus. The nine scripts have casts ranging from two to twenty, however the author expects that some groups will reorganise the twenty-character script for a smaller group - his estimated minimum cast is six. |
| Run Time | Around 30 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A series of short scripts for teenagers. Simple to set, but with plenty of performance challenges. Contains swearing. |
| Synopsis | Nine short scripts:
Introduction (Nominally twenty roles)
Bittersweet Symphony (Seven roles)
The Drugs Don't Work (Four roles)
Sonnet (Four roles)
Juliet (Two roles)
Romeo (Two roles)
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (Five roles)
24 Minutes From Tulse Hill (Six roles)
Lucky (Nominally 15 roles) |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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| The Vanity of Dorian Gray by Valerie Goodwin |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 8. Minimum total with doubling = 11. Minimum total without doubling = 20. Chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 75 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | The producer's copy of the script includes suggestions for 5 (public domain) songs. Lazy Bee Scripts does not supply any sheet music with this script. |
| Style | Seventy-five minute adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel, peppered with Victorian and Edwardian music hall songs and comedy. |
| Synopsis | The hedonistic young man Dorian Gray makes a wish that his portrait would age instead of himself, and the wish comes true. He takes advantage of his eternal youth to court and then dispose of a never-ending line of young women, but four decades later, his sins catch up with him. |
| Price | For scripts and live performance rights, please click on the Price Link to find the cost. For scripts and lockdown videos/streaming rights, click here |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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