A grumpy widow with a tendency to worry is packing up her things to move into a smaller place .Her enthusiastic granddaughter is helping her, when the granddaughter opens an old schoolbook to find a valentine her granddaughter had never opened. The granddaughter wants to open it; the grandmother worries about what it might contain, and whether the course of her life would have changed if she’d opened it when she received it. Cast: Two females — one senior, one teen-ager. Running time: Ten minutes.

An allegorical Christmas story. A stray sheep leads two girls in rural Australia to a hidden stash of stars. Cast consists of a talking sheep, a talking dog and two teenage girls. Cast: Four – two female, two non-gender.

GOD OF A DEAD UNIVERSE
A dark look at the last days of life on Mars. The Martian civilization has mismanaged its resources and is now running out of water. The rival political factions appear to have come together to install a new government, one that has embarked on a massive canal project to bring water from the poles. A newspaper reporter covering the canal project notices a discrepancy, though, and he/she begins investigating. The reporter suspects embezzlement. When the reporter confronts the chancellor, the chancellor freely admits to siphoning off money, but not for personal use. Instead, it’s to build a giant underground library in which to store Martian artifacts. The chancellor confesses that the canal project is merely a diversion to keep people busy – there’s no way it will work. The planet will run out of water long before it’s completed, and the underground library is an attempt to save at least some remnant of Martian life in case other intelligent beings ever discover it. Cast: 12 or 13, all non-gender.

THE WEIRD SISTERS GO WEST
The three witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth turn up in a western town and quickly bring order to the Old West, with a few complications along the way. Cast: Eight – four female, three male, one-non-gender.

A math teacher at a Martian school for girls teaches a forbidden subject – how to compute the rate of evaporation of the planet’s last, dying ocean. Cast: Five – one adult female, two non-gender adults, two teen-age girls.

In 1977 NASA launched two Voyager satellites to explore the outer planets and then continue on beyond the solar system. Both carried a “golden record,” a gold phonograph record containing sights and sounds from earth, in case the spacecraft were ever discovered by an alien civilization. Among the selections: “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry. Here's one possible encounter. Cast: Four – two male, one female, one non-gender.

At America's Mass Shooting Channel, it's all shootings all the time. We follow how the crew covers the latest mass casualty event. Cast: 9 or 10. Cast: If 9: 2 female, 2 male, 5 non-gender. If 10: 2 female, 2 male, 6 non-gender. Running time: 10 minutes.

A boy accidentally kills his father on a hunting trip. He goes to the River Styx, sneaks aboard the ferry to the far shore. Once aboard, he picks the pockets of the dead, stealing the coins they have been given by loved ones for the final passage. He uses these to try to bribe the ferryman to let him cross to find his father and return him to the land of the living. The ferryman agrees, but on one condition, which goes badly for the boy. Cast: Six: One juvenile male, two adult males, three non-gender. Running time: Ten to twelve minutes.

A director tries to explain a new play to the crew. Opinions vary. A meta-play about theatre. Cast: Five – all non-gender. About 10 minutes.

It’s just before Christmas and the shopping mall Santa has sent word he won’t be showing up. Just then, security brings in a homeless man found rooting around in the trash outside. The manager makes him the Santa. Things go very well, almost too well. Then comes the last kid in line, who turns out to be the homeless man’s son. Cast: Six — 2 male adults, 1 female adult, 1 male child, 2 non-gender adults. Running time: Eight to ten minutes.

The supposed face on Mars? It was commissioned by a politician who knew the truth — that Mars was running out of water. But he told the public something else entirely. Cast: Two, non-gender.

A rag-tag barbershop quartet presents “Hamlet,” to the tune of “In The Good Old Summertime.” Cast: Six – one male, one female, four non-gender.

The place: A busy sidewalk. Somebody loses a contact lens and asks others to help look for it. Dark comedy ensues. Cast: Six – 2 female, 1 male, 3 non-gender.

A script that’s either quite silly or deep existential, in which we explore the many reasons why the chicken might have crossed the road and what it means. Somehow this works in the clash of religion and science, Shakespeare, Einstein, country music and a police interrogation. Cast: Six to nineteen. The basic cast is 6 — 3 male, 1 female, 3 non-gender — but can be expanded to as large as 19, which would take 13 male, 2 female, 4 non-gender. Or, you can choose some number and gender configuration in between minimum and maximum. Running time: Twelve minutes.

A television producer explains to a TV chef that he need to simplify some of his language because many younger viewers do not understand them. He reacts badly and winds up creating a mess with broken eggs and flour. Cast: Four -- One male, three non-gender.

A father reads his daughter a fairy tale as a bedtime story --- which the characters begin to act out. The girl doesn’t like how the story is going -- no strong female role models, for instance -- so she changes it all around. This is the result. Cast: Five -- three males, two females.

Santa wonders why he hasn’t heard from Virginia, so he goes to check up on her. He surprises her during an authorized party when her parents are away. Complications ensue. Cast: Eight — 1 male, 6 female, 1 non-gender.

A man’s display of Christmas lights flashing to the tune of “Joy to The World” attracts the attention of an alien race, which struggles to interpret the transmission. Cast: Nine — Four male, three female, two non-gender or one male, six females, two non-gender.

A teenage girl’s old dolls come to life to try to save her life when she attempts to commit suicide by swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills. Cast: Four, plus an off-stage voice to make five. Three female, two non-gender. Running time: Fifteen or so minutes

A dark allegorical tale about modern politics and immigration. An American truck driver sleeping in his cab at a truckstop in southern California is awoken by two teenage girls, Sam and Libby. He thinks they’re truckstop prostitutes and tries to run them away. Instead, the one explains that she has rescued her sister from drug gangs in Los Angeles and is trying to take her home to safety in New York. The rescued sister is our allegorical Statue of Liberty. In fact, she has not been rescued; she has been drugged against her will, for reciting — and practicing — the poem at the statue’s base: “give me your tired, your poor . . . ” As the roadtrip across North American unfolds, we see that the older sister is not, in fact, a protector and rescuer, but rather her kidnapper, who is trying to brainwash her. Along the way, the keep running into another truck driver, who is taking the same route across the country, and a mysterious woman. In the climactic scene, Sam has hired a tattoo artist to blot out “The New Colossus” poem that Libby has tattooed on her. Just then the two mystery figures burst in — revealing themselves to be special agents for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are mounting a hostage rescue and extraction to take Libby to safety in Canada. They are joined by a Mexican intelligence agent, as well, who they had previously met along the way at a truckstop. Cast: Eight — Five female (including who can pass for teens, and one Latina adult), three male.

ONE-ACT: A poor family in Ukraine has a tree but can’t afford decorations. Meanwhile, three spiders living in the house decide the only place safe from the cleaning is the tree. Santa turns their webs into tinsel, delighting everyone. Cast: Six or seven. If six – four female, one male, one non-gender. If seven – four female, two male, one non-gender. Running time: 20-25 minutes. (Not to be confused with THE CHRISTMAS SPIDER, singular, a shorter one-act play by the same author with a similar theme but different story)

ONE-ACT: An angel appears to a single mother at Christmas and helps her find a common bond with her surly teenage daughter. Cast: Three females. Running time: 20 minutes.

FULL-LENGTH: A quirky love story, of sorts. The North Star has abandoned his post in the sky, tired of all the pressure. He just wants to have fun. He is pursued by three Arctic mermaids, guardians of the northern realms, who want to persuade him to return to the sky. They pop up in the backyard hockey rink of a teenage girl in rural Manitoba and persuade her, however reluctantly, to go after the North Star. After all, mermaids don't have legs and now that the North Star is inland, they're unable to do much. The girl agrees, but only because the mermaids promise to leave her backyard hockey rink, which they have punched through. Meanwhile, a neighbor boy has a crush on the girl, which appears to be unrequited. They often play hockey, which always ends with her knocking his teeth out. In the end, the girl and the mermaids devise a plan to persuade the North Star to return to the sky, and it all comes to fruition at a Winnipeg Jets hockey game. Lots of unusual costuming opportunities and physical humor. Cast: Seven – 2 male, 4 female, 1 non-gender.

TEN-MINUTE PLAY: SILENCING THE VOICES
A dark, abstract piece about school shootings and suicide. After a school shooting in which the shooter claimed to have heard the voices of other killers in his head, a teenage girl kills herself – in hopes she can find those voices and kill them. Cast: 7 – 2 female, 5 non-gender. Running time: Ten minutes.

FIVE-MINUTE PLAY: THE CELLPHONES OF THE DEAD
A police officer’s somber monologue: He was at the scene of a mass shooting, and could literally hear the awful news start to spread -- as the cellphones of the victims started to ring with desperate messages from their frantic friends. This was inspired by the mass shooting at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, where this macabre phenomenon played out. Cast: One speaker, with as many bodies as you muster. I've put in the number "10" in the form only because it required a number.

FULL-LENGTH: A parody of some common Shakespeare themes, with good stage combat roles for women and girls. The daughters of a lord receive letters from their boyfriends, informing them that they have been imprisoned in the Tower of London and expect to be executed. The two girls do what seems only natural to them; they dress up as men and set off to London to rescue them – not realizing that the boyfriends intended these as break-up letters. Comedy ensues. Cast: 13 – 7 females, 6 males.

The story of the Odyssey, more or less, in which each line consists of just a single word. Ideal for a class project. Includes monsters and a talking hamburger. Cast: As few as 18 — 9 males, 3 females, 6 non-gender — or as many as 33 — 17 males, 7 females, 9 non-gender. Running time: One hour.

This follows Lila’s quest to become a lawyer. There are three different timelines, Lila as a working-class girl who aspires to go to college, Lila as a young adult secretly reading for the law, and Lila in 1967, living in a retirement home, when she is confronted with what could be her most important case. She takes an interest in an African-American teenager working in the retirement home and arranges to get her into her alma mater, Rosewood College. When the college closes rather than integrate, Lila sues the school – and finds herself confronting an old antagonist. At the end, the different threads of her life all come together. Cast: Nine – Five female, four male.

A teen-age Russian chess prodigy is sent, against her will, on an exchange trip to a small town in Texas, which hasn’t had a girl born there in the past twenty years. Svetlana is immediately drafted to serve as cheerleader for a football team that has never won a game. Meanwhile, her big sister back in Moscow runs an Internet scam for mail-order brides. East meets west, and comedy ensues. Cast: Six – five female, one male.

A Christmas story that involves a talking cat, a talking mouse, an angel and a newly-single mom and her son/daughter. Christmas is approaching and there’s not much joy for Riley (who can be anywhere from roughly 8-15). His/her parents have broken up and his/her mother says there’s not enough money for even a Christmas tree. Riley decides to fashion his/her own — out of beer cans salvaged from the trash, with sticks to serve as limbs. The mom is touched by this gesture, and, against her better judgement, agrees to hang ornaments on it — including a very old angel ornament that once belonged to her grandmother. The cat — who can talk to the audience, but no one else — tries to warn that this isn’t a good idea, but the humans don’t listen. The ornament falls and breaks, angering the mom, who orders Riley to bed while she tries to drink away her sorrows. It’s then that the broken ornament turns into an real angel, who tries to deliver an important message. Cast: Five. Two females, and three non-gender (including the child).

A different kind of Christmas story. A 12-year-old girl in the United States, disappointed that her mother couldn’t afford to celebrate Christmas, runs away from home in search of Santa Claus. Along the way she meets a series of characters eventually join the search for her as she makes her way north, eventually winding up in Churchill, Manitoba. While this appears to take a “fractured fairy tale” approach – the girl meets three people named Goldie, Frank and Murray, there’s a shepherd out tending his flock, and so forth – the ending conveys the message that Christmas isn’t about Santa Claus at all. There’s also a talking moose, three talking sheep who steal a farm truck and a police car, and a talking polar bear. Cast: 14-16, depending on doubling: 4 female, 4 male, and 6-8 non-gender. One of those female is 12 years old; one of the non-gender roles must be able to play a horn.

Imagine a factory town after the factory has closed. Now imagine it’s Mount Olympus and it’s the ancient gods who are now unemployed. A bleak look at what happens next, with music (well, one song at the beginning and reprised at the end, so it's really a straight play not a musical). Cast: Eleven – 6 males, 5 females. Running time: One hour.

A Southern family is divided over what to do with the family farm when the
patriarch retires. The drama focuses on the farmer’s youngest daughter, a
waitress and single mom named Virginia, who is eager to subdivide the
farm as a way to make her fortune. Her goal is complicated by the prospect
of a new highway going through the neighborhood – and the discovery of
Civil War artifacts on the site. The story deals with a variety of universal
themes, but also many topical references, from urbanization of rural areas,
the preservation of historical sites, and NASCAR. Cast : 11 – 4 adult
females, 3 adult males, 4 female children (two teens, two pre-teens), and
one off-stage voice which can be either male or female. Set requirements:
Minimal, although at various points you’ll need to create some aspects of a
kitchen and a diner.
• Finalist, Shenandoah International Playwrights, Staunton, Va., 2004.

A comedy with a message, and echoes of Shakespeare, set in Renaissance Italy. A shipwreck on a deserted island leaves only three survivors — two young children and a forgetful woman who thinks she is their servant. The girl, Antoinette, grows up to be a pirate, the boy, Tristan, grows up to be a poet, and all are eventually rescued. But now the brother is thrown into the duke’s prison for writing an offensive poem and the sword-wielding pirate-sister is determined to rescue him. She disguises herself as a man and takes a job as the royal taste-tester in order to get close enough to free him. She finds that everyone in the palace is in the wrong job — the court herald doesn’t like to speak in public, the court poet can’t rhyme, the chef can’t cook, and so forth — though each has some other talent. The play ends with a dramatic sword fight — between a man dressed as a woman and a woman dressed as a man — and the discovery that Antoinette is the true heir to the duchy, and the forgetful servant is really her mother. Antoinette’s first act upon taking office is to put everyone in the proper job. The message, of course, is that everyone has some hidden talent. Plus, a nice sword-fighting scene and some strong roles for women. Cast: 18 — 4 female, 6 male, 8 non-gender.

This is the female version of Hamlet. It’s the basic Hamlet story, transported to a modern setting and with all the genders reversed. So Hamlet becomes Hamlette, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become Rosie and Gilda, Claudius becomes Claudia, and so forth. Instead of being set in a castle in Denmark, this version is set in a suburban home — and opens at a slumber party instead of the nightwatch. And, of course, it’s told in modern language. Otherwise, everything’s here — the skull, the gravediggers, the poisoned swords, the climactic sword fight. And, because the genders are reversed, this script gives women a rare opportunity for a swordfight on stage. If you’ve ever wanted to stage Hamlet, but didn’t think the cast or audience would get the language, or that you didn’t have enough men, here’s the solution. Cast size can range anywhere from 13 to 20, depending on doubling. If 13 — 11 female, 2 male. Or the cast can be expanded up to 20 — 13 female, 6 male, 1 non-gender.

A sports play for women that isn’t really about sports. A former high school softball star sits in prison, estranged from her 14-year-old daughter, who has inherited the woman’s talent for pitching but doesn’t realize it. While the mom tries to contact her daughter, the girl spends her time trying to avoid a dangerous situation in the home where she’s living. Cast: Eight — Four females (one to play a teenage girl), three males, one non-gender.

Based on the life of Sergei Korolev, the mastermind of the Soviet space program. Because his name was a state secret in the Soviet Union, he is virtually known in the West, but he is almost single-handedly responsible for the space race — he launched the first satellite, the first animal into space, the first satellite to the moon, the first man in space, the first woman in space, and many other space firsts long before the Americans. Korolev was a visionary engineer who was first jailed under Stalin’s purges for his experiments, and then released when Stalin understood the need for a missile program. Korolev died tragically, in 1966, and the Soviet moon program died with him. Cast: One man show. Running time: 90 minutes.

FULL-LENGTH: Based on the life of Maria Mitchell, America’s first female astronomer. She grew up on Nantucket Island during the whaling era, where she learned the stars at a young age from her father, who worked on navigational instruments for the sailors. In 1847, she became the first American to discover a comet, and went on to win fame as the first woman in a variety of scientific accomplishments, ending her career as a professor at Vassar College. Along the way, she faced opposition from men and women alike who frowned on a woman being a scientist. At Vassar, she was a hard taskmistress, insisting her students learn complicated mathematical formula to understand the orbits of the planets. Deeply religious, Maria Mitchell insisted that these formula were nothing less than a hymn to God’s grand design. Yet she also clashed with authorities, who were often exasperated by her disregard for school rules. She roused students in the middle of the night to look at the sky, once ordered a tree chopped down because it blocked her view of a comet, and even asked a minister to cut short his prayer at evening chapel so she could go observe Saturn. Cast: Two — one woman in her 50s and a man to play various other parts. This is basically a one-woman show with some incidental parts played by a man. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Shakespeare had his version of Richard III. This is a modern telling, complete with press secretaries, pollsters, media coverage and cellphones. Beyond that, it’s historically correct. This consists of two one-acts, “The Making of the King 1483” and “The Making of the King 1485,” which can either stand alone, or, when put together, constitute a full-length script. Cast: 23 — 2 female, 10 male, 11 non-gender.
• Finalist, Peterson Playwriting Competition, (final four out of 300) Catawba
College, N.C., 2004.

Where did Santa Claus come from? There is no particular origin myth, until now. This story begins in the 1740s with an eccentric German professor of what we now call physics. He invents time travel, and when he becomes the target of the wrath of a mob who wants to burn him as a witch, he uses it to escape. Involves science fiction, treason against the king, a love story, and some cooking. Cast: Seven – six male, one female.

For photos and video from the first staged reading, see www.dwayneyancey.com.

A twirler from back East finds herself stranded in Texas, in trouble with the law for accidentally setting fire to a motel room with her fire baton. To make amends, the judge orders her to teach baton twirling to the girls in the town. However, there are only three — all daughters of a local survivalist, who would rather spend time in weapons training than in baton classes. Meanwhile, the state of Texas drops the town from the highway map. To get back on the map, the town busybody thinks it would be a fine idea for this new baton corps to march in the Cotton Bowl parade. Comedy ensues, involving batons, armadillos, chickens falling from the sky, and many other things Texan. Cast: Eight — five female, three male. The females consist of one senior, one late teens or early 20s who can twirl a baton, and three teens.

A British drawing room farce, with modern sensibilities. The chauvInistic proprietor of an 19th century London newspaper must deal with a wife who’s a suffragette and a daughter who seeks own career, and an old school rival out to embarrass him. The plot concerns a series of dispatches being penned by an adventurer in Africa, which have made the Herald a popular newspaper. Unbeknownst to the publisher, the dispatches are actually being written by his wife, who seeks a literary career. Meanwhile, the daughter suspects something is amiss — goes to work for the rival newspaper to expose the fraud. Comedy ensues. Cast: Seven — four males, three females. Running time: Two hours

Note: This play is published by Eldridge Plays and Musicals, www.histage.com

A play about baseball – and immigration. The immigrant-hating and baseball-loving sheriff of a rural Texas county faces a dilemma when he discovers a Hispanic boy who can throw a 90-mile-per-hour fastball. Cast: Ten – four female, six male, but three of those males have small parts. Note: One of the female characters is Hispanic/Latina, college student.