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| A Thirty-Minute Tempest by Shakespeare, abridged Bill Tordoff |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 9. Minimum Female roles = 2. Minimum total with doubling = 11. Minimum total without doubling = 15. No chorus. Like much of Shakespeare, the cast is male-heavy. Don't let that put you off! |
| Run Time | Around 35 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Abridgement of William Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', 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 | Prospero, the exiled duke of Milan, has raised his daughter Miranda alone on an island with nobody else around but Caliban, a deformed creature Prospero treats as a slave. Using his magic to wreck a ship carrying the usurping Duke of Milan and his entourage, Prospero aims to awe the noblemen, reassert his right to the throne of Milan, and find a match for his daughter. |
| 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 Women and Shakespeare's Will by Joan Greening
2022 Edinburgh Fringe production received a 5-Star review from Arts Reviews Edinburgh. |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 0. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 3. Minimum total without doubling = 3. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 40 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Quick-witted one-act comedy. Single set requiring only a few items of furniture. |
| Synopsis | After the death of William Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway is visited by two women with shocking revelations. Both claim to have known her husband intimately, and each want a piece of Will's 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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| Twelfth Night [60-minute abridgement] by Shakespeare, abridged Jack Shaw |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 9. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 12. Minimum total without doubling = 14. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 60 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Abridgement of William Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night', with every word remaining Shakespeare's.
(The abridgement is copyrighted, so we charge for scripts and copying rights, but performances are royalty-free.) |
| Synopsis | A cross-dressing survivor of a shipwreck, separated from her twin brother, finds herself in the centre of a confusing love triangle. |
| 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 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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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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| Who's Hamlet by George Freek |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 2. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 5. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 50 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A one-act farce in two acts. (I mean it's in two acts but is relatively short.) A farce, with misunderstandings galore and all the theatrical temperament you could wish for. All this comes with a simple set and small cast. |
| Synopsis | A young actor takes the role of Hamlet from his ageing father. |
| 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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| Will's Women by Louise Wade |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 1. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 5. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 20 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Short one-act play. Single set. |
| Synopsis | Hard at work on his new tragedy about a certain Scotsman, Will Shakespeare is visited by four women from the play, and they're not at all happy with him. They have something to say about the violence and negative portrayal of women. |
| 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 Winter's Tale [60-minute abridgement] by Shakespeare, abridged Jack Shaw |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 10. Minimum total without doubling = 24. No chorus. The 24 roles could be played by 6M, 4F or 5M, 5F. |
| Run Time | Around 60 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A 60-minute abridgement of the Shakespeare comedy-drama.
(The abridgement is copyrighted, so we charge for scripts and copying rights, but, because all the words are Shakespeare's and therefore out of copyright, performances are royalty-free.) |
| Synopsis | King Leontes of Sicilia, suspecting his wife Hermione of cheating on him with the King of Bohemia, has her imprisoned and her newborn baby sent far away. When Hermione dies in custody, Leontes is left without an heir. But fifteen years later in Bohemia, the abandoned princess Perdita has a royal suitor.
(Includes Shakespeare's most famous stage direction.) |
| 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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