High School Plays with Minimal Resources

This is a list of 10 simplistic shows that can be done at a high school. My goal was to find 10 simple and cheap shows that would be appropriate for high school students. I was also hoping to exclude shows that are popular and/or produced regularly throughout the country.

The Moment When
By: James Lapine

Full Length Drama

2 M 3W 1 M or W

There are several locations in this show, but it was written with the intention of being performed with a unit set. There are very few props and the costumes are modern. This would be a good dramatic piece to do with a small budget.

“THE MOMENT WHEN follows five people as their lives intertwine and separate. Steven, an artist, meets the writer Alice at a fashionable New York party hosted by Paula, a legendary literary agent. Paula's young assistant, Dana, introduces herself to Alice and Steven, and the courses of the next fifteen years of their lives are set in motion. The play marks those moments in our lives that may pass unnoticed but determine who we become. THE MOMENT WHEN, while tracking the successes and failures of career, marriage, parenthood and friendship, also charts the life of Dana and Steven's son, Charley, who begins his own trajectory towards fulfillment and loss.”
http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=3781


Picasso at the Lapin Agile
By: Steve Martin

Full Length Comedy

7 m, 2 f

This show is a fun comedy that would be enjoyable for high school age students. The story takes place in a single location, a bar. This show is absurd in many ways. It could be done well with little technical work. The time of the place could be played with do to the nature of the show and its use of time.

"This long running Off-Broadway absurdist comedy places Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso in a Parisian cafe in 1904, just before the renowned scientist transformed physics with his theory of relativity and the celebrated painter set the art world afire with cubism. In his first comedy for the stage, the popular actor and screenwriter plays fast and loose with fact, fame and fortune as these two geniuses muse on the century's achievements and prospects as well as other fanciful topics with infectious dizziness. Bystanders, including Picasso' agent, the bartender and his mistress, Picasso's date, an elderly philosopher, Charles Dabernow Schmendimen and an idiot inventor introduce additional flourishes of humor. The final surprise patron to join the merriment at the Lapin Agile is a charismatic dark haired singer time warped in from a later era."
http://www.samuelfrench.com/store/product_info.php/products_id/1506


Deathbed
By: Mark Schultz

Full Length Drama
5 men, 4 women: 9 total
Flexible Set

FEE: $75 per performance.

This show is not a traditional play. It takes place in many different locations, many of which are not specific. With the use of simple lighting and a unit set, this show could be done easily. It is a 50 minute play. The clothing in the show is modern and could probably be pulled. This piece has a manageable sized cast, and a deep dramatic storyline.

"Martha has cancer and demands attention. Danny doesn't want to deal. Thomas has things he'd like to forget. Steven loves too much. Susan feels betrayed. Martin is confused. And Ian wants to know what death is really like. Standing at the intersection of death, desire, memory and disease, how can we reasonably articulate our own pain in the face of another's suffering? Maybe it's just easier to read a book. And have a sandwich."
http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=4024


Mid-Life Dracula
By: Dennis Snee

4m / 5f / bare stage with pieces

This show can be done in modern dress, and as little as three set pieces; one of which is a wooden coffin. This comedy would be fun for high school students.

"Everybody's favorite vampire is having a birthday, and it's a biggie: Count Dracula is turning the big 4-0-0. And although 400 isn't old for a healthy, eternal, Night Creature like the Count, the women in his life - his wife, teenage daughter and mother-in-law - are each giving him a different reason to dread the occasion. Plus, his friend and physician, Dr. Z, suspects that Dracula's mid-life crisis is all in his mind. But the Count is convinced that his decline is real, if only because these days he can't even get to sleep unless he's in an orthopedic coffin. This smart, silly spoof celebrates the Dracula legend in a surprise party of laughs for cast and audience alike."
http://www.bakersplays.com/store/product_info.php/cPath/7/products_id/1162?osCsid=dfe420a306b3b18c155c8ba85a1709f3



Proof
By: David Auburn

Drama
Full Length

2 men, 2 women: 4 total

This show can be done well with just a few unit pieces. The whole play takes place on the back porch of an apartment in Chicago. It calls for modern dress, and minimal props. The story is deep, but I don't feel that it falls out of the

"On the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, Catherine, a troubled young woman, has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, a famous mathematician. Now, following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions; the arrival of her estranged sister, Claire; and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father's who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind. Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father's madness—or genius—will she inherit?"
http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=2961



God's Favorite

Neil Simon

Full Length, Comedy

5 m, 3 f

The show takes place inside of a home. The set can be made very simple. the dress is modern, and there are no difficult props.

"Successful Long Island businessman Joe Benjamin is a modern-day 'Job' with a high-maintenance wife, ungrateful children and wise-cracking household help. Just when it seems things couldn't get any worse, he is visited by Sidney Lipton aka A messenger from God (and compulsive film buff) with a mission: test Joe's faith and report back to "the Boss". The jokes and Tests of Faith fly fast and furious as Neil Simon spins a contemporary morality tale like no other in this hilarious comedy."


FEE: $125 per performance.

http://www.samuelfrench.com/store/product_info.php/products_id/1372



THE LITTLE FOXES
Lillian Hellman

Drama
Full Length


FEE: $75 per performance.

"Picture a charming home in the South. Into this peaceful scene put the prosperous, despotic Hubbard family—Ben, possessive and scheming; Oscar, cruel and arrogant; Ben's dupe, Leo, weak and unprincipled; Regina wickedly clever—each trying to outwit the other. In contrast, meet lonely intimidated Birdie, whom Oscar wed for her father's cotton fields; wistful Alexandra, Regina's daughter; and Horace, ailing husband of Regina, between whom a breach has existed for years. The conflict in these lives has been caused by Ben's ambition to erect a cotton mill. The brothers still lack $75,000 to complete the transaction. This, they hope, will come from Horace, who has been in a hospital with a heart ailment. Horace is beset by his relatives the first hour of his homecoming, but refuses to commit himself. Desperate, Leo and his father, Oscar, plan for Leo to take $80,000 worth of bonds from Horace's safe-deposit box. However, knowing that he is to be short-lived, Horace has his box brought to him. Discovering the theft, he informs his wife that he has willed the bonds to her. He promises to say nothing about the theft, calling it a loan. Cruelly, Regina recalls their unhappy married life, causing Horace to be stricken with a severe attack. Regina refuses to get his medicine upstairs, hoping that the effort of climbing may prove fatal. Horace collapses. Then Regina blackmails her brothers into giving her 75% of the business instead of their planned 33 1/3%, or she will reveal their theft. We feel, however, that crafty Ben holds the trump card by his parting remark, 'What was a man in a wheelchair doing on a staircase?'"

http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=1845



Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett

Tragic Comedy
Full Length

4 men, 1 boy: 5 total

This show can be done with little to no set. The costumes can be pretty much anything. There are very few props.

FEE: $75 per performance.

"The NY World-Telegram describes: 'GODOT cannot be compared to any other theater work, because its purpose is so different. Two dilapidated bums fill their days as painlessly as they can. They wait for Godot, a personage who will explain their interminable insignificance, or put an end to it. They are resourceful, with quarrels and their dependence on each other, as children are. They pass the time 'which would have passed anyway.' A brutal man of means comes by, leading a weakling slave who does his bidding like a mechanical doll. Later on he comes back, blind, and his slave is mute, but the relationship is unchanged. Every day a child comes from the unknown Godot, and evasively puts the big arrival off until tomorrow…It is a tragic view. Yet, in performance, most of it is brilliant, bitter comedy…It is a portrait of the dogged resilience of a man's spirit in the face of little hope.'"

http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=1730




The Exonerated
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen

Drama
Full Length

7 men, 3 women

This show can be done with no set. The costumes are modern, and there are little to no props.

FEE: $75 per performance.

"Culled from interviews, letters, transcripts, case files and the public record, THE EXONERATED tells the true stories of six wrongfully convicted survivors of death row in their own words. In this ninety-minute intermission less play, we meet Kerry, a sensitive Texan brutalized on death row for twenty-two years before being exonerated by DNA evidence; we meet Gary, a Midwestern organic farmer condemned for the murder of his own parents and later exonerated when two motorcycle-gang members confess. We meet Robert, an African-American horse groomer who spent seven years on death row for the murder of a white woman before evidence emerges that the victim was found clutching hair from a Caucasian attacker. We hear from David, a shy man with aspirations to the ministry, bullied into confessing at eighteen to a robbery/murder he had nothing to do with, scarred from a youth spent in prison and struggling to regain his faith; and from Sunny, a bright-spirited hippie who, along with her husband, spent seventeen years in prison for the murder of two police officers—while another man confessed and was ignored by the courts. And we meet Delbert, a poet who serves as the play's center, convicted of a rape/murder in the Deep South of the 1970s and later freed when evidence surfaced showing that he was not even in the town when the crime occurred. Moving between first-person monologues and scenes set in courtrooms and prisons, the six interwoven stories paint a picture of an American criminal justice system gone horribly wrong—and of six brave souls who persevered to survive it."



The Pavilion
Craig Wright

Drama
Full Length

2 men, 1 woman (flexible casting): 3 total

This show can be done with no set. The costumes are modern and there are few props.

FEE: $75 per performance.

"Hailed by critics as an 'an Our Town for our time,' this play is by turns poetic and comic, romantic and philosophical. Peter returns to his twenty-year high-school reunion with dreams of winning back Kari, the girl he left behind after an unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship. Standing in Peter's way is Kari's bitter-as-ever resentment, her husband and the fact that Peter still hasn't grown up. As the night progresses, both Peter and Kari are led, through their interactions with a host of characters all played by a virtuosic Narrator, to face the consequences of choices made long ago and start back into life with newfound strength and bittersweet resolve. "


http://www.dramatists.com/cgi-bin/db/single.asp?key=3128