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| The Magdalen Whitewash by Valerie Goodwin |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 11. Minimum total with doubling = 13. Minimum total without doubling = 21. Chorus. Optional female chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 84 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Full-length drama. Multiple locations, but simple set requirements, with main scenes played on the full stage and smaller scenes downstage with a few pieces of furniture. |
| Synopsis | In 1946, teenage Nancy tracks down her birth mother Mary to one of the many 'Magdalen laundries' set up in Ireland to house women shunned by society for unmarried pregnancies. But why doesn't Mary want to leave with Nancy? Sixteen years earlier, during Mary's first days at the laundry, she and the other women deal with isolation, pregnancies, and mistreatment from the nuns and priests. |
| 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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| Master Shakeshafte by Peter Parkinson |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 8. Minimum Female roles = 5. Minimum total with doubling = 13. Minimum total without doubling = 18. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 84 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A full length play, with a variety of settings, generally indicated by furniture and atmosphere. |
| Synopsis | There is much speculation over the 'missing years' of Shakespeare's life, and this play offers a glimpse into what may have happened if the bard of Avon really did spend time as a tutor in Hoghton Hall, before becoming a playwright in earnest. There are numerous nods to familiar plays and characters, and also lines or titles which may delight an alert audience. |
| 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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| Matchmakers by Robert M. Barr |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 4. Minimum Female roles = 5. Minimum total with doubling = 9. Minimum total without doubling = 10. No chorus. A range of ages and plenty of opportunity for characterisation. |
| Run Time | Around 80 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Full length play set in the Jewish community in 19th century Eastern Europe. Clever and funny, with a plot that twists and turns. Multiple locations, but easy to realise without elaborate scenery. |
| Synopsis | Reuven, the son of a Rabbi, is studying to be a Rabbi too. He needs a wife to support him, but also to prevent him being drafted into the Czar's army. Unfortunately he and his family have to move to another village where their matchmaker runs into another Matchmaker. |
| 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 Mayhem on Smuggler's Pier by Richard Coleman |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 9. Minimum Female roles = 5. Minimum total with doubling = 16. Minimum total without doubling = 19. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 90 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Murder mystery set within a cabaret show and therefore interspersed with cabaret acts. Simple sets. |
| Synopsis | The Pettigrew Players have assembled for their annual summer show on Smuggler's Pier, but just as they begin their rehearsals, maverick financier Cornelius Van De Vellt announces that he has bought the pier and is closing them down. With all the players depending on the success of the show, there are plenty of suspects when Van De Vellt is found murdered. Will Inspector Bacchus solve the case (or will he just sit back and enjoy the cabaret)? |
| 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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Merely Players by Damian Trasler
Performance by Debenhem Players won the Adjudicator's Award at the 2015 Woodbridge Drama Festival. |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 2. Minimum total with doubling = 5. Minimum total without doubling = 5. No chorus. Each of the actors plays two contrasting roles. |
| Run Time | Around 85 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Full-length play, morphing from light back-stage romantic comedy into a murder mystery and back again. Single set, most of which is put in place during the course of the play. |
| Synopsis | This is great fun. 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, and Phyllis's daydream of being the Lady of the Manor suddenly comes to life as a period drama, until the spell is broken, leaving Phyllis with new insights into her life. |
| 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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| A Midsummer Night's Dream [90-minute abridgement] by Shakespeare, abridged Gerald P. Murphy |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 7. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 17. Minimum total without doubling = 21. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 90 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Abridgement of William Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', with the original text reduced by a thousand lines or so.
(The abridgement is copyrighted, so we charge for scripts and copying rights, but performances are royalty-free.) |
| Synopsis | Fairies make mischief in the Athenian woods, mixing up two couples and pairing the fairy queen with one of the 'Rude Mechanicals' who are in the woods rehearsing a play. When all is straight, we finally get to see the Mechanicals' play, and the Athenian nobility turn critics.
The text aims to provide a workable edition of Shakespeare for secondary schools. |
| 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 |
| Feedback | Click here to find out what other customers said about this script. |
| Click here to read the script or Click here for more details. |
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| Mind Over Manor by Loretta Willoughby |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 7. Minimum total with doubling = 10. Minimum total without doubling = 10. No chorus. The characters are all adults. They are written as 3M, 7F, but one of the male characters could be switched to female with the change of a couple of lines. |
| Run Time | Around 90 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Modern comedy play. Single set (reception room of large, old US house), simple props. Three acts. |
| Synopsis | Jasmine and Chester arrive at Summer Meadows, a large out-of-town mansion, looking for the owner. What they meet is a collection of people who are, at the very least, eccentric. When Jasmine starts to question them fiercely, the residents start to question her motives - then Jasmine goes missing... |
| 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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| A Mug's Game by Sarah Reilly |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 7. Minimum total without doubling = 7. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 90 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Full-length play, posing question of inner versus outward beauty. Contains mild swearing and an Australian accent. |
| Synopsis | Suzy is unhappy with her new life in the country and decides to host a dinner party. She invites her glamorous friend Alice whose reasons for recent plastic surgery splits the group. Her arrival with Suzy's husband causes cynical sister Jo to suspect foul play. As the wine flows, her usually quiet neighbour, Beth, to her husband's dismay, speaks her mind and there are shock announcements as innermost feelings are exposed. Add to this the new handsome neighbour moving in next door, there are comical scenes leading to life-changing results. |
| 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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Murder at Mole End by Karen Doling
Best Seller |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 4. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 8. Minimum total without doubling = 8. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 85 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Full-length murder mystery play (single set). A comedy which manages to get as far as self-parody whilst delivering a complex and satisfying mystery. |
| Synopsis | Two couples attend a Murder Mystery Weekend, only to discover that they all have links to the main actor in the piece. Before too long, he's been murdered for real and the race is on to solve the murder and avoid jail! |
| 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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| Murder at the Theatre by Emma Bevan |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 11. Minimum total without doubling = 12. No chorus. Eleven on-stage characters and an off-stage voice that might be recorded. The gender of five characters (written 4M, 1F) could be changed by changing names and pronouns. |
| Run Time | Around 88 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A full-length comedy murder mystery play. |
| Synopsis | A director, his assistant, the stage manager and a range of actors are all rehearsing when a murder takes place. Bumbling Inspector Ambrose shows up just in time to start investigating before the theatre is shut off from the world by a snowstorm. Will the murderer strike again? |
| 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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