|
| The Merchant of Venice [60-minute abridgement] by Shakespeare, abridged Jack Shaw |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 9. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 12. Minimum total without doubling = 16. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 60 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Every word is Shakespeare's, but the cast list has been reduced, with four minor characters and all servants/court officials removed.
(The abridgement is copyrighted, so we charge for scripts and copying rights, but performances are royalty-free.) |
| Synopsis | Bassanio needs money so that he can court the noble lady Portia. He goes to his friend Antonio, who helps negotiate a loan from the moneylender Shylock. If the money is not repaid, Shylock will demand a pound of Antonio's flesh. This leads to a court case with an unexpected judge.
(The abridgement is copyrighted, so we charge for scripts and copying rights, but performances are royalty-free.) |
| 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. |
|
|
| Murder at the Murder Mystery Party by Geoff Parker |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 64 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Comedy thriller in two short acts and one (dining room) set. |
| Synopsis | Richard and Miranda's stormy marriage might reach some semblance of stability during a murder mystery party for their friends. Unfortunately tensions abound at the party and someone is actually murdered. |
| 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. |
|
|
| Murder in the Village Hall by Emma Bevan |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 5. Minimum Female roles = 8. Minimum total with doubling = 13. Minimum total without doubling = 13. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 66 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A full length farce with a single (village hall) setting. |
| Synopsis | The parish council meeting is interrupted by first the local guides who borrow the table, and then the police, informing them of the death of the parish council chairman in unusual circumstances. A catalogue of disaster follows as the bumbling Inspector tries to solve the murder, but the murderer is still at large and on the rampage with an apparent grudge against the parish council. This comedy thriller follows the investigation real time. Can anyone work out who the killer is before it’s too late? Will the guides return the table? Will the rain ever stop and will the meeting ever be finished? |
| 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. |
|
|
| The Necessity Of Atheism by Seán Lang |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 6. Minimum Female roles = 0. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 64 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A one act historical play |
| Synopsis | Oxford, 1811. Amidst harsh laws restricting the freedom of the press, Percy Bysshe Shelley, a rather unorthodox, flamboyant undergraduate, publishes a short pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism. The Master of his college is inclined to dismiss it as a bit of undergraduate exuberance but Lord Eldon, Lord Chancellor of England and old member of the college, takes a much more serious view. |
| 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. |
|
|
| Not 2B by George Freek |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. Excellent characters. Amanda especially would be a joy of a part - a scatty woman who's raised two wildly ambitious children, kind and soft except when she gets onto the subject of her ex-husband when she becomes positively possessed. |
| Run Time | Around 65 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Two-act play (but on the shorter side of that form). Single domestic set. Contains mild swearing. |
| Synopsis | Amanda worries that her children, Tom and Laura, are too ambitious. Tom sets Laura up with a guy from his company, but the evening takes a few twists that no one was expecting. Luckily it all goes over Amanda's head, and she tells herself she's got a happy ending after all. |
| 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. |
|
|
| Nothing Old Nothing New by Anne Graham |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 4. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 8. Minimum total without doubling = 8. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 60 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A farce with a single-setting - set over two acts, though could be performed in one. Some strong language |
| Synopsis | Valerie is dead but unable to leave her house, now occupied by her son and his wife Zoe - the cause of her fury and her enforced sit-in. Her grandson arrives to find his mother making plans for his sister’s wedding. When the bride and groom and his father arrive for the weekend along with the groom’s psychic mother, scandalous revelations lead to the wedding plans being blown apart and a ruined weekend, although chaotic events lead to Valerie’s happy release. |
| 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. |
|
|
Outside the Box by JPS Yates
Performance by Tarrystone Players won the John Rigg Award for Best Comedy and the South of England Building Society Award for Best Stage Presentation at the Maidenhead Drama Festival 2011. |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 9. No chorus. Six on--stage actors plus three offstage voices appearing briefly at the start (so could be recordings). |
| Run Time | Around 65 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | A play for adults, satirising office life - where the office workers are nursery toys. Single set. Written in one act, but quite long. A cracking pace might get it down to one-act-play festival length. Contains mild swearing. |
| Synopsis | The nursery toys are mostly happy with their lot in life - only Ragdoll feels unwanted, so it doesn't surprise her when bureaucratic Fairy Crackernuts arrives and announces they're having 'a re-shuffle'. What does surprise her is that Teddy is the who's been made redundant... |
| 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. |
|
|
| Palmy Balmy Days by Richard Morris |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 2. Minimum Female roles = 4. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. All characters are senior citizens. |
| Run Time | Around 75 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | The Producer's copy of the script suggests music and songs - including gospel songs, spirituals and hymns. Lazy Bee Scripts does not supply any sheet music with this script. |
| Style | Long one-act play (or a full-length play designed to be played as a single act). Single (minimal) set, few props. Contains swearing and recreational vegetation. |
| Synopsis | On the threshold of the afterlife, Divine Intervention greets the newly arrived (or recently departed), the start of a reconciliation process, and a review of the lot each was dealt in life.
A meditation on the vagaries of getting old and the expectations, frustrations and disappointments of the participants. |
| 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. |
|
|
| Pawn by Brian Marchbank |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 3. Minimum Female roles = 3. Minimum total with doubling = 6. Minimum total without doubling = 6. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 72 minutes. [Estimated!] Experiential run time (first production) 1 hour, 2 minutes. |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Character comedy structured as a thriller. Single pawn shop setting. On the boundary between a full-length and a one-act play. |
| Synopsis | The robbery of a Manchester pawn shop goes wrong and becomes a hostage situation, trapped together the hostages and hostage takers realise there is history between them, the resulting friction requires the novice police negotiator to deal with both volatile groups to resolve the situation. |
| 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. |
|
|
| The Perils at Peddler's Cove by Richard Coleman |
| Roles | Minimum Male roles = 9. Minimum Female roles = 5. Minimum total with doubling = 16. Minimum total without doubling = 16. No chorus. |
| Run Time | Around 75 minutes. [Estimated!] |
| Music | None. |
| Style | Murder mystery peopled with eccentric - and suspicious - characters. One set with additional front-of-curtain scenes. |
| Synopsis | Letters from a lawyer summon a group of people to a remote island, apparently for a weekend house-party, but then one of the guests is murdered. |
| 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. |
|