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| Ambition by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 1. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 4. Minimum total without doubling = 5. No chorus. Could be performed by children or a mixture of adults and children. (Or even, for more comic effect, with the children's roles taken by adults.) It might be possible for Mr James, the teacher, to double as the fairy! |
| Run Time | Around 10 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Simple, short comedy play. No set, simple props (a chair, a magic wand...)
Arguably a moral play - be careful what you wish for... |
| Synopsis | Three schoolgirls are given the chance to have their fondest wish come true, but things don't quite work out the way they hope, and soon they're all having second thoughts. |
| 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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| Amy's Brief Visit To The Garden Of Earthly Delight by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 1. Minimum Female roles = 5. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 26. No chorus. There are 22 speaking roles (15 female, 7 male) plus four non-speaking rugby players (*) but it could be played with a lot of doubling by a cast of six.
* For speakers of US English, these would be 'jocks'. |
| Run Time | Around 130 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Full-length play for a youth theatre or high school company. A bold play, dealing with peer-pressure, and teenage bravado. Contains swearing and teenage themes. |
| Synopsis | Determined to catch up with her friends, Amy loses her virginity to her friend's brother at a drunken party. Unfortunately she doesn't use any protection and finds herself not only pregnant, but sadly wrong about what her friends have been doing. |
| 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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| Beasts by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 6. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 10. Minimum total without doubling = 35. No chorus. The characters are a mixture of adults and children, intended to be played by a Youth Theatre company or a mixed company. |
| Run Time | Around 175 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Collection of five one-act plays based on short stories by Saki (H H Munro). Following the originals, the humour is very dark - verging on wicked. |
| Synopsis | The stories are:
Sredni Vashtar in which a boy oppressed by his aunt extracts an unexpected revenge
Gabriel-Ernest about a werewolf
The Storyteller featuring a subversive entertainer
The Open Window in which the hero does not discover a rest cure and
The Gala Programme which revisits Roman attitudes to female emancipation and entertainment |
| 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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| Gabriel-Ernest by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. Either for a youth theatre company, or for a mix of adults and children. |
| Run Time | Around 30 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A one-act stage adaptation of a subversive Saki story - this one is edgy, verging on (gothic) horror. There are nine scenes, intended to be played seamlessley with the stage divided into one area for a house and one for all other scenes. |
| Synopsis | 'There's a beast in your woods.'
So it seems. Van Cheele's life is interrupted by the arrival of a strange boy, with disturbing behaviour and an unusual disregard for clothes.
(The author makes some suggestions about how to deal with this last point whilst remaining within the bounds of decency!) |
| 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 Gala Programme by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 1. Minimum total with doubling = 4. Minimum total without doubling = 4. No chorus. Whilst there isn't a formal requirement for a chorus, one could easily be added, as the protagonists refer to the reactions of crowd. |
| Run Time | Around 20 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Short one-act play, adapting a story by Saki. Single set (as simple as you like). A comedy, if you have Saki's very dark sense of humour. |
| Synopsis | A sufragette rebellion is projected back to Roman times. The Romans, needless to say, did not have very modern attitudes to female participation in the political process, and the emperor's solution to the problem is calculated to please the crowd of the circus maximus rather than twenty-first century sensibilities! |
| 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 Jabberwocky by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 8. Minimum total with doubling = 11. Minimum total without doubling = 20. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 30 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | One-act comedy play for kids. |
| Synopsis | A modern interpretation of Lewis Carroll's famous poem -, with a few liberties taken - to produce a riotous and very moral tale. |
| 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 Musicians of Bremen by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 4. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 16. Minimum total without doubling = 26. No chorus. No formal chorus, but there is the option of bringing on additional singers. |
| Run Time | Around 15 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | The script includes songs set to well-known music. Lazy Bee Scripts does not supply any sheet music with this script. |
| Style | A one-act rhyming play for Junior School pupils. |
| Synopsis | Four unwanted animals, a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, meet up and believe they have amazing singing prowess. Though everyone they meet disagrees, the band accidentally put to flight a band of robbers, and live ever afterward in the robber's house with their ill-gotten gains. |
| 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 Open Window by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 7. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 45 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A blackly comic stage adaptation of one of Saki's subversive stories. Two locations, but neither need be elaborate (so could be done in a 'black box' with small items of furniture). Aimed at secondary schools, but could be done by adults. |
| Synopsis | Framton has been sent to the country as a rest cure for his nerves. However, his encounter with his doctor's cousin, Gertrude, and her neices is anything but calming. |
| 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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| Sredni Vashtar by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 6. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 10. Minimum total without doubling = 12. Chorus. Chorus is written as a 'Greek chorus', talking in unison and commenting on the action. (This could, of course, be done in other ways.) |
| Run Time | Around 40 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | One-act play based on a short story by Saki. Intended to be played near-continuously on a simple set (different parts of the stage representing different locations). |
| Synopsis | This might be described as a black comedy, since our sympathies lie with Conradin, the orphan at the centre of the story who is oppressed by his aunt. Eventually, the aunt gets her comeuppance from Sredni Vashtar, Conradin's very dangerous pet, and Conradin gets to eat more toast. |
| 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 Storyteller by Tony Best |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. One 'character' is the voice of a station announcer. The other characters take on multiple roles. |
| Run Time | Around 40 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Stage adaptation of one of Saki's subversive stories. Single set - largely a few benches. |
| Synopsis | On a railway journey, three children are being disruptive. Their aunt tries to settle them with a moralistic story, but this fails to do the trick, whereas a fellow traveller captivates them with a story in which a good girl is by virtue of being good, caught and devoured by a wolf.
(In this adaptation, the writer takes an even more subversive interpretation of 'devoured', though a milder ending is also offered!) |
| 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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