Tag Archives: one act plays

The LazyBee Scripts newsletter for January 2015

Posted on January 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

I don’t have any scripts mentioned in this newsletter, because the new writing is still underway, but there are some great plays, sketches and musical pieces to be found here.

From LazyBee Scripts:

As ever, almost everything from this newsletter (and much more) can be found via the Lazy Bee Scripts web site.

This time, because I’ve been promising them for a while, I’ll start with the new murder mysteries…

Murder Mysteries

Murder Mysteries – the interactive ones, where the audience has to work out whodunnit – are responsible for one of the complexities of the web site.  Because some groups run these competitively, with prizes for the best solution from the audience, we don’t display the scripts on-line (we have tasters instead), and they have their own section of the site.  We’ve recently added:-

  • Murder in Hollywood by Giles Black, a scripted scene (on a film set), leading to a murder, followed by audience interrogation of the suspects, plus a smattering of written clues.
  • Let Sleeping Frogs Die, a fully-scripted murder mystery by Patricia G., which still challenges the audience to work out who killed the wealthy victim, Monsieur le Comte d’Avignon.
  • Following the same pattern, Roger Lee’s Death at the Shangri-La is fully scripted.  (It has a core cast of 9 plus three optional roles, with multiple versions of the script to accommodate the different cast sizes.)
  • After the scripted section of Joanne Mercer’s Murder at Rancho Mucho Denaros the audience have the opportunity to interrogate the suspects, and the murder mystery pack even includes a special currency to allow the audience to bribe the cast into revealing additional information!

 

Musicals, Musical Plays and Plays with Music

  • The Wicked Witch & The Magic Shop by William Arnold Ashbrook is a large-cast family show with original songs and opportunities for audience participation (therefore occupying a theatrical space close to British Pantomime).
  • We already have several treatments of Aesop stories on our books, but we felt that Peter Nuttall’s Aesop’s Famous Fables and Twisted Tales was sufficiently different.  It’s intended for performance by children or by adults to an audience of children, and ends with an audience participation song, which should be tremendous fun for small children.
  • Nicholas Richards is a teacher (of languages, I think, but specialising in classics).  He was looking for a treatment of The Labours Of Heracles and couldn’t find one, so wrote his own as a comedy play with four (optional) songs.  Intended for school productions from Year 6 (US Grade 5) upwards.
  • Martin R.  Collin manages to tell a sentimental story about an inspirational and much-loved teacher without straying into mawkishness.  I Love You When It’s Raining, Roy G Biv is a one-act play with suggestions for a couple of public domain songs.
  • It may be a little late to say It’s Christmas Time!, but Sharon Stace-Smith’s musical nativity play (with scores for 9 songs and 8 pieces of incidental music) will still be available at the end of the year.

 

Plays for Schools and Youth Theatre

  • We start with a light comedy for kids in the form of Anything You Say, Your Majesty by Geoff Bamber, in which a queen wishes to be featured in a celebrity gossip magazine, and the queen’s word is law…
  • Sarah Brown gives a knowing treatment of a school class trying to get to grips with the English and Drama syllabus in Shakespeare – It’s All Greek To Me!
  • Opening Doors by Keith Badham is an ensemble piece for a youth theatre company (28 roles played by a minimum of 10 actors).  It’s intended for a aimple set with just one prop: a free-standing doorway.
  • The award-winning Call To Duty by Nettie Baskcomb Brown is an even more multi-layered piece, taking the characters through drama rehearsals and console games into a recreation of the trenches of the First World War.

 

Pantomimes

  • We’ve published two new pantomimes by Luke Reilly, both on themes that are not so common in the pantomime canon.  There’s The Princess and the Pea, built around the Hans Christian Andersen story and Hickory Dickory Dock, a completely original story, created around some familiar nursery rhyme characters and a wicked spider.  A good choice for companies who have already worked through the usual pantomime stories.
  • Peter Pan occupies a unique position in British copyright law, so that we pay half the author’s royalties to Great Ormond Street Hospital on all our derivatives of J M Barrie’s story.  The latest one is Peter Pan – A Pantomime by Stephen and Rachel Humphreys – the usual lost boys, pirates and mermaids, but given a pantomime twist with Smee becoming Mrs Smee, Captain Hook’s Nanny.
  • Bob Tucker’s outlaw story is not the usual family show.  Robin Hood – An Investigation Into His Life And Times is a short, risqué sort of British panto, something of a parody of the genre, rather than a straight retelling of the story.

 

Full-Length Plays

  • Geoff Bamber has a long (and, he assures me, distinguished) history as a member of a pub quiz team.  Some of this experience has been brought into Quizzers, a farce set in the study where Keith Smedley is trying to prepare for just such a quiz.  (4M, 4F)
  • As you might expect from the title, The Prisoners’ Dilemma by Matthew Lynch is set in a cell where a group of strangers are incarcerated for reasons they cannot comprehend…  (3M, 3F, 4 either)
  • Maverick Cop by Paul John Matthews is a comedy caper in which the police force, baffled by a series of murders, decide to recall a rule-breaking detective.  His individual approach is somewhat reminiscent of Inspector Clouseau.  (6M, 5F)
  • Ethan Bortman’s thriller Obvious Guilt opens in a living room where there is plenty of evidence of a crime, but no body…  (A minimum of 4M, 2F)
  • Michael Baulch has created a full-length play from Jane Austen’s Emma.  A well-thought-out staging has three locations created by redressing a single interior set.  (5M, 6F)
  • The Horrific Case Of Mr Valdemar is a story by Edgar Allen Poe, brought to the stage in suitably melodramatic fashion by Richard Layton.  (2M, 1F)

 

One-Act Plays

  • Richard Coleman has embarked on a series of comic verse plays that rearrange familiar stories.  The first of these is Scrooge’s Scruples which gives a major twist to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to show Scrooge as a determined do-gooder.  (A minimum cast of 16.)
  • It’s difficult to classify The Dial Conspiracy by Bob Tucker.  It’s a sort of comedy-farce-crime-caper, set in a remote hotel where weird and wonderful stratagems are used by a succession of unlikely characters vying with National Security officers.  (A cast of 12, of whom at least 4M, 2F)
  • Set on David’s birthday, Fifty! by Archie Wilson is more definitely a farce.  A surprise birthday party thrown by the wife and daughter and interrupted by the mistress.  (5M, 6F)
  • The Pagan Priests by Jim Pinnock is a farce for a cast of 7 (5M, 2F), set, unusually, in a church sacristy where the Bishop’s attempts to overhaul the management of a parish go drastically off the rails.
  • We’ve published two new one-act comedy plays by Cheryl Barrett, both developed from her own shorter plays.  A Matter Of Health and Safety (3M, 4F) is set at a village fete whilst You’ll Suit Just Fine (3M, 1F) is set in a small menswear shop, where Kevin, the new trainee, is trying to come to grips with customer service.
  • A couple with a history of neighbour disputes throw a dinner party in their new home.  What could possibly go wrong?  Find out as John Peel offers the chance to Meet The Neighbours (1M, 4F)
  • Robin Wilson’s Minutes By Air is a short light comedy for a cast of 2M, 3F, set in a meeting awaiting a crucial participant.
  • A different sort of meeting is the focus of Stephen Mercer’s comedy The Coven’s Convention, where the planning of a village fete is thrown off course by the enthusiasm of a new member.  (3M, 5F)
  • In Impatience and Improbability, Nic Dawson performs a neat comedic trick of intertwining 19th century manners with the present day.  It’s set in the gardens of a modern hotel which is running a Jane Austen-themed weekend.  (4M, 4F)
  • Moving from the comedy and on to the drama, Father’s Day by Allan Williams sees an old soldier visited by a young man investigating a gas leak.  Neither is entirely what the other expects.  (2M, 1F)
  • Guernica Goodbye, an award-winning play by William Campbell is a powerful drama in which Spanish refugees living in Chartres find themselves once again embroiled in conflict in the aftermath of the Second World War.  (2M, 1F)
  • Peter Appleton’s Sweet Dreams is a twisted psychological drama, verging on the melodramatic.  Anne has trouble telling reality from her dreams.  Is her fiancé alive or dead?  Is her father helping her, or holding her prisoner?  Can she even trust her oldest friend?  (3M, 2F)
  • All in the Past by Wendy Ash is a revenge drama in which Trevor renews his acquaintance with the men who bullied him years ago when they were all at school.  (3M, 1F)
  • Whilst there are two speaking roles, and a couple of silent dancers in Remember Scarborough by James Baynes, almost all the weight falls on the old man, waiting for his daughter on a park bench, poignantly reminiscing about the Second World War, his best friend and his wife.  (2M, 2F)
  • I saw the Sky Blue Theatre production of Frank Canino’s Nightwalking as part of the Cambridge Theatre Challenge winners’ showcase, and I was knocked-out by it.  A chamber theatre piece – black-box set, with a stepladder as the sole piece of furniture.  The actors communicate through interior monologues and movement.  (1M, 2F)
  • Jennifer Marie Sancho’s Politically Correct was the runner-up in the same competition.  Her drama is set in the ‘common room’ of an asylum where four inmates plan an escape.  And what a collection of rebels – Jane Austen, Margaret Thatcher, Emmeline Pankhurst and Florence Nightingale!  (1M, 4F)
  • The third of the Cambridge Theatre Challenge finalists (in our one act category – there are a couple more amongst the shorter plays) is A Darker Shade Of Closure by Richard Charles.  It’s a thriller set in an apartment where Tina is in a tight spot, blackmailed over her behaviour.  (1M, 2F)
  • Cold Blooded Killer by Geoff Rose-Michael is another award winner, this time of the new writing award from the 2013 Leatherhead Drama Festival.  A thriller that starts with a break-in at the home of the recently widowed Jack and leads to a shocking conclusion.  (Cast of three, of whom 1M, 1F)

 

Sketches, Skits and Short Plays

  • Continuing with the Cambridge Theatre Challenge finalists, we’ve published Brian Coyle’s The Proposition in which Alan has been picked up, but not for the purposes he first assumed.  Leo and Laila have something different in mind – it’s disturbing, but it’s all about art…  (2M, 1F)
  • The last of our CTC finalists (in this set) was Ashley Harris with Baking Bread, set on a park bench by a lake, where Bella is waiting to meet John.  (3M, 1F)
  • Croft & Barnett introduce us to Dr Death, a comedy sketch for 2M, set in the surgery of a doctor with a rather unusual approach to pain.
  • We’ve published a new pair of shorts from Jonathan Edgington.  The Slim Blonde Beauty is a romantic comedy inspired by a short personal ad in a free newspaper (2M, 4F).  She Came In Through The Bathroom Window (1M, 1F) is a surreal comedy in which a chap finds a strange woman in his bath.  (The sort of thing that might happen to anyone.)
  • Next in the multi-publications category, we have three comedy sketches from Robert Black.  The Also-Ran Club (3M, 1F) finds a group of unsuccessful inventors trying to form an organisation.  Message For Sophie will resonate – or possibly ring a bell – with those close to mobile phone addicts (1M, 1F).  Billy Loves Brenda (1M, 1F) finds the hero trying to explain-away a new tattoo.
  • Finally, we have two new comedies from Cheryl Barrett.  Bring Me Sunshine (4M, 2F) was inspired by a real incident – the damage to a statue on Morecambe sea front.  Around The Fridge In Eighty Calories is a monologue for a woman who is larger than she thinks she should be.

 

 

That’s all for now, but, as noted at the start, there’s a cascade of new material coming through.

A Happy New Year to one and all,

Stuart Ardern
Lazy Bee Scripts

To read these scripts online, go to http://www.lazybeescripts.co.uk and use the “search title” function to bring up the script you’re looking for. Remember, these scripts are free to READ, not free to USE.

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The New Releases from Lazy Bee Scripts

Posted on January 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Since one of my most popular posts (or the best “search engine snare”, I guess) has been the one that contained an update on Lazy Bee releases, here’s another. The fact that it contains details of my latest published sketch is NOT coincidence – I’m blowing my own trumpet these days, remember?

Most of the details behind the information in this post can be found via the “What’s New by Category” page of the Lazy Bee Scripts web site

Scripts for Kids (Schools or Youth Theatre)

  • We’ve published two new kids’ plays by Geoff Bamber. What’s Up, Icarus? is a comic rendition of an Ancient Greek myth, telling the tale of how King Minos tried to turn Crete into a successful holiday destination with a maze and resident monster as tourist attractions. Puss in Boots [Short Version] is more familiar as a pantomime, but this treatment is straightforward comedy without the panto baggage (or Dame, as she is usually called). Anyway, it has the usual ingredients of the tale – a miller’s son, a talking cat, a princess and an ogre. At least two live happily ever after.
  • Rabbie Burns’ Night by Olivia Arieti is a children’s introduction to the celebration of the Scottish bard. No set or props required, but the odd display of tartan wouldn’t go amiss. (Seven characters.)
  • Don Lowry’s Alvin And The Queen is a (US) High School play, set in the school cafe. Alvin is your typical high school nerd, and he’s desperately in love with Barbie, the homecoming queen and beauty, who is just not the academic type…
  • We’re a bit late in the year publishing Reindeer Games by Martin R. Collin – or perhaps we’re very early. Anyway, as you might expect, it’s a Christmas pageant (a compilation of many old (largely secular) Christmas traditions, including carolling and mummers’ plays, with a modern quiz show thrown in for good measure). A cast from large (we think the minimum is 22 players) to huge with a choir thrown-in for good measure.
  • Despite what you might expect from the title, Dance Story by Frank Gibbons is not a musical, but the backdrop is a dance competition, so dance could be a major element. A cast of at least 11, of whom at least 8 girls.
  • On the other hand, Hamelin is a definitely a musical play – Philip Bird’s variation on the Pied Piper story with songs by Isabelle Michalakis. Written for a cast of 21.
  • The Frog Princess [Version 2] by Tim O’Brien is our second musical version of the time-honoured tale of the culture clash between royalty and amphibians. A minimum cast of 23, but plenty of room for more courtiers and pond-life.
  • Timothy Hallett and Nicholas Richards take us completely into musical territory with The Lambton Worm. It is accompanied by music throughout, with the tale told in a mixture of song and spoken verse. The Lambton Worm is an old folk tale from North-East England. ‘Worm’ is used in the old sense of ‘serpent‘ – so this is a story of knights fighting dragons.
  • Hannah Thomas’s Romeo and Juliet – Sped Up! is a ten-minute reduction of Shakespeare’s play (in modern English and occasional noises) for a cast of 8 or more. No set requirements, just a few props, love and death. Written for school children, whereas…

Shorter Shakespeare
I’m never quite sure whether to group Bill Tordoff’s abridgements of Shakespeare plays in with the school plays (because they’re designed so that they can be read/performed within the bounds of one lesson) or to group them with the one-act plays because performance isn’t restricted to children.
This is the compromise – a separate category!

  • A Forty-Minute Timon of Athens is a reduction of one of the lesser-known plays. In addition to the Greek setting, it has the air of a Greek tragedy, with the central character brought down by his own behaviour. (As usual, the plot, language and characters are preserved, but the text is cut to a one-act length.)

Sketches & Very Short Plays

  • Diamond Jubilee 2012 is a sketch show by Ray Lawrence (with ‘an assist’ from Gary Diamond) written, as you may of guessed, in celebration of the sixtieth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. It’s a revue covering the last sixty years in a series of monologues and short sketches. (Add songs to taste for the perfect jubilee celebration.) Many of the sketches are available separately. We’ve also published another of Ray’s rhyming monologues, this time it’s The Clock Mender a tale of the typical tinkerer with timepieces.
  • According to Damian Trasler, It’s Not the End of the World though it does involve a surprising number of zombies. A short comedy sketch for a cast of three.
  • Lorelei by Jonathan Edgington is a dramatic monologue for a young woman. Single set (three pieces of furniture) and a few props. Lorelei’s story is a sad one, of a life gone wrong and a struggle to cope with a new identity and the loss of the past.
  • The reception area for a TV studio is the setting for Bob Tucker’s Searching, a fifteen-minute comedy about the preparations for a dating show (2M, 1F)
  • The typical Writers’ Group is the subject of Tom Jensen’s comedy sketch for 2M, 2F. Will’s just had a play reading, but the news isn’t good. They think his play needs lightening-up…
  • Wally Smith has delivered a couple of serious short plays. The first, Imperfect Speakers, is a 20-minute political thriller for a cast of four, whilst Holding Up A Mirror (for 2M, 1F) explores the nature of drama and the relationship between actors and audience in fifteen minutes.
  • Nicholas Richards also presents a new pair of scripts, but these are light comedy sketches in the form of Doctor Sleep (2F, 1M), set in a doctor’s surgery and A New Job For The Wicked One (1M, 1 either) featuring a regular day in the Little Noddingsbury Jobcentre.

One-Act Plays

  • Colin Calvert’s Café Society is a romantic comedy of an unexpected kind for a cast of 3 (2M, 1F), set in a somewhat run-down Cafe where Pauline is looking for no more than quiet contemplation and lunch.
  • What would result from M C Escher writing plays? Our reviewer reckoned it would be something like Seven Ages of Love by Robert Burns. (No, not that Burns, another one.) The history of a failed romance is explained in reverse order which, at least, gives it a happy ending. (2M, 2F)
  • Establishing Relations by David Craig Smith is a one-act drama with a single domestic set in which a young man introduces his girlfriend to his parents and is dismayed by his father’s reaction. (2M, 2F)

Full-Length Plays

  • Reading Between The Lines by Geoff Bamber is a farce set on the fringes of a small literary festival. The characters (3M, 5F) include an academic, a gambler, a vicar, a housekeeper, a French lady… No stereotypes here, oh dear me, no.
  • We stay in village festival territory for A Fete Worse Than Death by Richard James. This time it’s a fully fledged whodunnit, but with a distinctly comic edge. (4M, 3F and a very large marrow.)
  • Archie Wilson’s The Séance, on the other hand, is a different animal entirely – a ghostly horror story (with lots of fun for the special effects crew) set in the attic of a house where a murder had been committed. (4M, 3F)

Pantomimes
Unusually, we haven’t published any new pantomimes in the last couple of months. (However, there are plenty more in the pipeline, and we already have over 200 to choose from).

Murder Mysteries
We treat these in a different way from conventional scripts (for a start, they’re in a different part of the web site). They come in a variety of formats from fully scripted to fully improvised.
We’ve got one new one this time, but there are more in the pipeline…

  • They Never See It Coming by Die Laughing Murder Mysteries is the sort of piece where we provide a scenario, character briefs and ancillary materials, and the cast improvise the dialogue.

Other Things for Your Show
What else can  we offer you to spice up your show?

  • We now have the third CD of spoof adverts and theatre announcements from TLC Creative – Four and Twenty Advertisements – The Third and Youngest! (I particularly like the parody that is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.)
  • How about kitting-out your cast in polo shirts, sweaters or hoodies emblazoned with your show logo?   On the clothing front, our supplier of fleeces has chosen to but an elegant stripe down the front of a popular ladies’ fleece.  It looks great, but it means we would have to stitch logos over a seam, which would tend to mess-up the stitching, so we’ve withdrawn that item.  (We’re looking for a replacement.)  We’ve also done some successful trial runs embroidering logos onto school book bags.  We’ll get those onto the web site eventually.  (Meanwhile if you’re desperate for an embroidered book bag, give us a call!)
  • Or how about “good luck” or “thanks” cards for your cast and helpers?

For those and many more gems of theatrical paraphernalia, see the links from our home page.

And that’s it for now – but, as usual, there’s plenty more in the pipeline.

Please remember, although I’ve provided the links so you can see all these plays for yourself, if you wish to perform or present them, even in a classroom setting, you need a performance licence from Lazy Bee Scripts. These are not extortionate, and the rates are proportional to the setting, so please enquire through www.lazybeescripts.co.uk . You’ll be pleasantly surprised! And you won’t be hunted down by rabid playwrights, eager to rend your living flesh and stake you out in the garden with blunt pencils…..

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Hello to Farewells

Posted on January 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

“A Time for Farewells” performed by FEATS

Kicking off the New Year, I had to resist the urge to write about resolutions, or latest projects, or review the failures/successes of 2011. Well, if not those, what? By far the most popular viewing on this site is the gallery of pictures for “A Time for Farewells“. Not my first play, maybe not even my favourite play, it’s nonetheless very popular around the world.

“A Time for Farewells” produced by Titirangi Theatre in New Zealand

Before getting into WHY it may be so popular, let’s have a brief summary of the plot for those who haven’t read it (and if you want to read it, you can find it HERE).

Alex is a batchelor lad until he meets Sarah. She’s not looking for love, she’s looking for a mechanic to fix her car. The play features episodes from Alex and Sarah’s life, interspersed with the couple themselves discussing their relationship. It’s clear there’s some sort of ending here, that this isn’t a loving nostalgia session, but an autopsy on a finished relationship. The play covers high and lows of their life together before bringing the audience up to date and letting them in on the event that Alex and Sarah are preparing for.

The original production, at RAF Halton, with Mark Blackman and Sue Fox as Alex and Sarah.

I like to think it’s a positive play, that the underlying message is hopeful. But I don’t think that’s what brings people to perform the play. There are some very practical reasons why this is a good one to pick, particularly for One Act Play Competitions.

Firstly, the set is simple. In the original set we had three stage blocks on the left hand side of the stage that could be rearranged to represent whatever location was needed. On the right hand side of the stage we had a bedroom set – actually, just the bed. The right hand side is where Alex and Sarah are when the play opens, that’s “now”. Everything that takes place in the past occurs on the left hand side. We had a doorway between the two, but I don’t believe that’s really necessary. So the set is simple, and doesn’t require any special effects or furniture moving during blackouts.

The cast is small. Aside from Alex and Sarah, there are only two other characters, and they really only appear in cameo. It’s essentially a two-handed play, and those two actors get to really stretch their acting muscles as they run through the life this pair have had together.

There’s comedy. I think that’s inevitable in the plays I write, since there’s very little I can take seriously, but in this case it’s important. Alex and Sarah make each other laugh, and the play is about recognising the valuable parts of their history together and holding on to them – the laughter and the tears.

Finally, it’s about people. The proof that this play is universal came with the success of Alan Leung’s production in Hong Kong. Though we had to have lengthy email conversations to sort out the peculiarities of English idiom (Alan was translating into Chinese, an unenviable task. Apparently the Chinese don’t have an equivalent for the phrase “Under the thumb” when it comes to henpecked husbands…) The Hong Kong production did so well in the competition that it was restaged later on, a tremendous complement.

One of the posters for the Hong Kong production

And after all the positive things, what about the flip side? Is there anything I would like to change? Well the one thing I hadn’t considered when I was writing the play was costume. Alex gets by well enough in a variety of shirtsleeves, but poor Sarah has to go from “stranded business woman” to “bride” to “holidaymaker by the pool” and so on. Most groups have found their own ways around my lack of vision there – in the original production Sue Fox managed to find herself a simple business-style dress that unbuttoned quickly, and went for and equally easy to don wedding dress. There have been other, equally inventive solutions, as the pictures show.

The relationship between Alex and Sarah seems to be one that people can believe in. Perhaps it’s also one they can relate to. Of course, I’m delighted that the play is so popular, and hope there are many more performances of it around the world. If you have a production planned, or if you’ve taken part in one, please let me have some photos to add to the gallery pages.

If you have any questions about “A Time for Farewells”, either about the writing or the staging of the play, feel free to drop me a line at dtrasler3@gmail.com. You can read “A Time for Farewells” and all my other published plays at www.lazybeescripts.co.uk

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All the latest from Lazy Bee Scripts!

Posted on May 1, 2011 | 6 comments

Me, when I used to blow the trumpet (aided by Photoshop...)

It’s considered bad form to blow your own trumpet, at least where I come from, but it’s ok to allow other people to sing your praises. So, sparing my blushes, I’ve decided to reprint the latest Lazy Bee Scripts Newsletter (The Buzz) which happens to include some mention of the latest full-length play by…ahem…well…ME!

Most of the following information can be found via the “What’s New by Category” page of the Lazy Bee Scripts web site 
The Royal Shakespeare Company‘s Open Stages Project
Open Stages is a collaboration between the RSC and community theatre groups.  As part of the project, the RSC has teamed-up with the National Drama Festivals Association to introduce a Shakespeare category into one-act and full-length play festivals in the UK.  The category is intended to cover Shakespeare plays and material related to the plays (this could include historical drama with Shakespearean connections, modern language interpretations of the plays or plays commenting on the plays.)
Hang on a minute!  Weren’t all the bard’s plays on the long side?  So where do you find one-act Shakespeare plays?  That, of course, is (one of the places) where we come in.  Bill Tordoff has been working his way through the canon, creating abridgements of the plays  These preserve the original plots, characters and language, but condense the plays to durations of between thirty and fifty minutes – ideal one-act festival length.  We have published 24 plays in this form along with a lot of other material relating to Shakespeare.
As an aide to people searching with this particular purpose, we have created links to summaries of the Shakespeare material.  (From the web site home page, follow the links to the One-Act Plays and Full-Length Plays main pages.)
Why not take Hamlet to a one-act festival?

Scripts for Kids (Schools or Youth Theatre)

  • Geoff Bamber has been busy. More accurately, we have been catching-up with our backlog of his scripts. In the last couple of months, we’ve published The Pied Piper of Hamelin – A Question of Rats, a highwayman romp called Stand and Deliver [Kids Play] (to distinguish it from a pantomime of the same name), Smugglers, and Oh, Mr Shakespeare!, all comedies, and the relatively serious Five Days in May, dealing with the relationship between three secondary school children, one of whom is confide to a wheelchair.
  • A Journey to Oz is Richard Coleman’s rhyming (non-musical) version of L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.
  • Whilst it may seem a little early, we’ve added a couple of pieces to our Christmas selection. Firstly, Bill Siviter offers God’s Messenger Department, an irreverent approach to the nativity (the story is all there, but the perspective is unorthodox and so likely to appeal to older children). A cast of 16 or more.
  • Then there’s A Double-Decker For Santa Claus by Olivia Arieti which leans to the secular side but takes a moral approach along the lines of A Christmas Carol (only without the ghosts!)  A cast of 6.
  • Maria’s Mask by Andrew Weaver is a play with suggested songs (that is to say, we don’t supply music, but the script includes suggestions for appropriate songs). A haunting, lyrical love story overlaid with knock-about comedy! A story of a ghost haunting the theatre where she used to dance.
  • On the more educational side, there’s Sue Russell’s Divali Assembly, a piece for a full junior school class, with a good balance between straight information delivery and drama around the Indian festival of lights. Sue’s Pirates Ahoy! is also surprisingly educational, covering a history of piracy.
  • Peter Bond delivers Androcles and the Lion as a short rhyming fable for a cast of 8 or 9.
  • A Forty-Minute Antony And Cleopatra is Bill Tordoff’s latest Shakespeare abridgement (as discussed above), and comes complete with literature’s second-most famous snake.
  • What would happen if a teacher was supplanted by a fairy with a magic wand? That’s more-or-less the premise of Ambition by Tony Best, a simple, short comedy play for a cast of four or five.
  • Nicholas Richards delivers broad-brush, knock-about comedy set in a restaurant in Everything All Right, Sir?  This is a flexible piece with two alternative ways of staging (and castin) the protest by the kitchen staff!
  • The King’s Spell by Sherrill S. Cannon & Kerry E. Gallagher is a class-sized play for elementary schools, embedding mixed-up versions of well-known nursery songs.
  • According to Louise Arnold, Everybody Wants to be a Cat.  It’s a short play about friendship for a cast of 6 to 9 actors.
  • Finally, in this section, there’s James O’Sullivan’s Once Upon A Time In Fairyland, a comical twisting of some well-known tales.

Musicals

  • Gerald P. Murphy’s The Fish and the Ring – The Musical is a one-act musical fable for kids – that is to say, it is designed to be performed by a school or youth theatre company. A fable about meddling with destiny. (For a company of 17 actors or more.)
  • The Pirate Queen by Tim O’Brien is intended for performance to a audience of children by an older company. A time-travelling musical with a healthy dose of piracy thrown-in! (Requires at least 29 actors.)

Sketches & Very Short Plays

  • I’m Famous is a Gerald P. Murphy adaptation of an Anton Chekhov short story, for anyone who thinks that celebrity culture is a recent invention! (2M, 2F)
  • Carol Kline’s Bud and Jewel – Busted and Bud and Jewel – Predictable could well be the start of a character comedy series. I do hope so. A well-drawn, bickering middle-aged couple.
  • Damian Trasler has produced Looking for Mr Evil (an interview for a galactic dictator) in his own right and, with added puns by David Lovesy, Shakespeare Re-imagined. Each one is a comedy sketch with a cast of two.
  • Every now and again, I tie myself in knots trying to characterise a piece. This is a case in point. What is Jonathan Edgington’s Quanto Sei Bella? A Short drama? A light romantic comedy? A play about relationships with a mild dose of magic realism? An interesting piece for 2M, 1F.
  • Windmills and Millstones by Louise Wade explores the life of fictional characters in the great maybe – before they have been committed to the page. (Minimum of 2M, 2F)
  • Mike Smith has contributed two delightfully odd shorts. There’s Lost and Found where the starting point is a pair of matching ‘small ads’ from a newspaper (1M, 1F), then there’s Point of Departure which sets off from a chance remark as a passenger leaves a car (1M, 1F, 1 Either – the cameo by the passenger who lights the fuse then stands well back.)
  • All Your Future Endeavors is a ten-minute bitter-sweet comedy by Molly McCluskey for a cast of 1M, 1F, in which an employee being ‘downsized’ after 20 years is not going to go quietly.
  • Multilayered is the word for Polytel by Nicholas Richards. We’re watching a couple discussing Polytel, the new revolution in technology… No, wait, we’re watching the filming of a commercial for Polytel, and the actors are rebelling against it… No, wait, we’ve been watching a short film arguing against modern technology… Haven’t we? (3M, 1F)
  • Peter Stallard didn’t think we’d publish Diary Of A Squirrel Hunter on the grounds that the irony is so heavy that it might be mistaken for extremely bad taste!  Essentially it’s a monologue, with an offstage police voice at the end.
  • Coming Home by Roger Woodcock is set in a private room in a nursing home.  A short, poignant drama in which a father’s failing memory throws up some surprises for his son. (2M, 1F)

One-Act Plays

  • At the beginning of March, we published Watch This Space [Comedy Play] by Karrena Dewhurst. (The bit in brackets is to distinguish it from the [Pantomime] with the same title by TLC Creative.) Karrena’s piece is a comedy, set on the bridge of a spaceship. This was followed-up by her friend Leo Finn who added to the comedy with Watch This Space Too, set on the same spaceship and largely using the same set of characters. Six characters in each case, including the voice of FRED the ship’s computer. The first script runs to a shade over 20 minutes, the second to a shade under.
  • George Freek’s Catch As Catch Can is a comedy, which is not what one expects from Othello. An alternative history, playing with our preconceptions of Shakespeare’s characters. (4M, 3F)
  • We published Baby Sparklers some time ago, but it’s listed here as a new script because Frank Gibbons mounted his own production for a drama festival and found that it was running slightly over the 50 minute limit, and therefore he revised it down to 45 minutes. A nostalgic evocation of childhood in the northwest of England. (4M, 4F).
  • Stewart Boston’s Problem In Judaea is an Easter Play, which gives some clue as to who is causing the problem. Three sets, but designed for minimal staging. (Needs 12 or 13 actors.)
  • A Trifle Unwell by Jane Lockyer Willis is difficult to categorise, but offers plenty of scope for characterisation. Set on the periphery of a party. (1M, 3F)
  • Duncan Battman has delivered two new plays. The Substitute is a long but dramatic monologue delivered by Frank, an ex-footballer who is now confined to a wheelchair. As he packs up his room he relates the ups and downs of his life, right up to the startling conclusion. Consequences, by contrast, has a cast of four (3M, 1F). A very theatrical presentation, without being melodramatic. A young policeman and his older sergeant discover a dead body, along with a letter that casts new light on a long-closed case.

Full-Length Plays

  • Geoff Bamber’s The Second Friday Of The Month is a farce in two short acts. Dan meets the psychologist who lives in the flat above him on the second Friday of each month, but their routine is broken by the arrival of some of Dan’s diverse acquaintances. A clever, funny play, exploring some rather unconventional relationships. (3M, 4F)
  • Merely Players is, surprisingly, Damian Trasler‘s first solo full-length play – and it’s brilliant. It morphs from light back-stage romantic comedy into a murder mystery and back again. Starting with a bare stage, under the guise of tidying the theatre’s store of props and costumes, the characters accidentally build the set of a drawing-room murder mystery, which then comes to life. (3M, 2F)
  • The Ghosts Of Halfway House by Richard James is a play for Halloween (or a play for whenever else you want a ghost story) with a single, haunted, set. (4M, 3F)
  • Sarah Reilly’s A Mug’s Game Poses questions of inner versus outward beauty (in the guise of a dinner party with drunken revelations). (3M, 4F)
  • A very dark tone is struck by Jessica McHugh’s Fools Call It Fate in which threads of tangled lives are interwoven with scenes in a form of purgatory. An intriguing, challenging and very well constructed play with lots of depth to the characters. (Needs at least 9 actors, of whom at least 3M, 4F)
  • Nursery Crimes – The Catnap Kidnap Caper is a full-length addition to TLC Creative’s popular Nursery Crimes series. A daft detective story set in the worlds of Fairytale and Nursery Rhymes. Think of it as Charles Perrault meets Raymond Chandler. Not a pantomime, but in the ‘family entertainment’ category. (10 characters, of which 5M, 3F).
  • Likewise, A Taste of the Orient by Vivienne Wilkes is a family show which could fill a similar slot to pantomime in a theatrical season. Includes two optional storytelling sequences (with roles which might be mimed by younger cast members). Large cast (at least 8M, 13F, with lots of chorus roles)

Pantomimes

  • Peter Bond’s The Magic Tinderbox is a panto based on a Hans Christian Andersen story (although the conventions of pantomime means that the story moves quite a way from the original, containing, for example, considerably more pizza.)
  • Rapunzel II – Back To The Tower by Sian Nixon also moves a fair way from the original story, but also contains appropriate dollops of pantomime fun and mayhem.
  • Our latest version of Cinderella comes from Mark Jack, and, because of the distinct period setting, is identified as Cinderella [Sixties] – Groovy!
  • Then there’s Peter Pan – see below

Peter Pan with a new pantomime edition, a few remarks about the Peter Pan range seem to be in order…

  •  Peter Pan (The Panto) is James Barry’s full-length British pantomime treatment of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Whilst it’s done in a modern panto style, the story remains faithful to the original. Includes flying sequences.  (Needs a cast of at least 16)
    In the original professional productions in Aldershot and Winchester, the initial flying sequence was done with the actors behind a gauze onto which a video sequence was projected so that the characters appeared to be flying over and around a London cityscape.   We will shortly be able to offer the video sequence as an optional extra, and I’ll put a demo video (from the Winchester production) on the web site as soon as I can sort the technology out.
  • For companies looking for a version of Peter Pan without the flying, Richard Coleman’s Captain Hook’s Revenge is very popular. (All the flying takes place off-stage, mainly indicated by the sounds of collisions with trees). Richard has also written a short rhyming version called Rhyming Captain Hook
  • Then there are the musical treatments – firstly a musical ‘prequel’, in the form of Hook and Peter Pan – How it All Began (Songs by Helen Dooley and Bob Walsh, book by Giles Scott). This was published in December, and we are just in the process of compiling a backing CD for it.
  • The second musical version is George Douglas Lee’s Stinkerbell which takes a much less reverent approach, and we meet the brother of Captain Hook who also lost a hand, but had it replaced in a slightly different way.  Ladies and gentlemen, meet Captain Plunger.
I wanted (this is me again, by the way!) to add links to all these plays individually, but that would be horribly time-consuming and make the page very blue-heavy. Do feel free to use the easy search facility on the Lazy Bee Scripts website to track down any of these fascinating and extremely performable scripts. Remember, they can all be read online, complete and free of charge, then all it takes is a short process to have the complete script downloaded to your computer.

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