The Drama Side

As a new drama teacher, one of my biggest challenges is finding material for my students to perform in the classroom and on stage. So I've been reading plays like a maniac trying to find options for my intermediate and advanced drama classes to produce this year. It is next to impossible to get students to show up for after school rehearsals, so all of my shows are produced by class, with most of t he rehearsal done during class time. So as many kids as possible need to be cast so they have something to do. Most of my reading in college and on my own was classical plays. I love Shakespeare and Ibsen, but the language of those kinds of plays is very challenging to my students. Plus they tend to be male heavy and my program follows the tradition of being mostly female. They can be complicated when it comes to sets, costumes, etc. When I arrived, I didn't even have a table or chairs to use on stage and most of our costumes only work for shows from the 80s through the present. I'm working on building our resources, but I need to be realistic about the budget.

So, I'm looking for a large cast show, not a musical, preferably and comedy or murder mystery with more women then men. The language needs to be fairly modern with characters that are interesting without being too complicated. It needs to run between 45 and 90 minutes. It needs to have a simple set and costumes we can scrounge from our costume room or from kids' closets. I also don't want to spend a bunch of money on royalties, because we don't have it.

Many of the classics that lots of schools do aren't working for me, like Our Town, You Can't Take It With You, Shakespeare (which will change in the next few years), Arsenic and Old Lace, etc. I love those plays, but they aren't going to meet my needs. So I'm trying to look out of the box. Instead of using Samuel French, I'm looking at smaller publishers who charge less and have sections of plays for high school students. I've ordered a bunch of stuff from:

• TheatreFolk, a site geared specifically towards middle and high school theatre. And they have free scenes and monologues on their site too!
• Heuer Publishing that has a lot of children's plays and story adaptations.
• Pioneer Drama Service that leans toward youth theatre as well, and has a lot of fun murder mysteries. 

I'm also looking at Dramatic Publishing and getting a bunch of stuff off of Amazon. I'll post a short list of play options once I get one put together.