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I have 4 sections of Theatre 1 students.  I have been cycling thought the same large cast short one acts to use with begining actors for the past few years and I am kinda sick of them. Looking for some fresh options.  Any titles/publishers/sites you can recommend?  I would be very grateful!
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Christine Dougherty
Theatre Teacher/Director
Delsea Regional School District
Franklinville NJ
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Here are a few recommendations. The links connect to detailed descriptions I've written about the plays on Plays.About.com. These are just a few. Click around the site and you will find more. Hope these are helpful:

“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Fifth Period”

“Lion and Mouse Stories”

“My Client Curley”

“Broken Hearts: Three Tales of Sorrow”

“The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet”

“Darcy’s Cinematic Life”

Also--send me a message if you are interested in considering an unpublished one-act I wrote. Its cast requires mostly females; one high school (so far) has performed the script and given me some excellent feedback. (It has 10 characters and some options for adding roles, so it may not be large enough for your needs....)

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Rosalind Flynn
Head of the M.A. in Theatre Education
The Catholic University of America
Silver Spring MD
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Christine,

How large are your classes?  I have a system for my 8th grade Drama where the entire class searches through all the play catalogues to find their One-Act play for the end of trimester Showcase performance. The cast is everyone in the class.  We note the gender balance in the class, 8 women & 10 men.  Then we search for plays that fit within our preferred genre (often comedy) and time limit of 25 to 30 minutes.

Once the students have made their list of possible titles, we read the synopsis of each of them aloud and vote on the ones that we think might work best.  We now have a list of 6 to 10 scripts to read more closely as a class.  We then vote on the best and order the rights and the scripts.  On to casting and rehearsal!

I find that this method invests the students in the decision as well as the rehearsal process.

Here is a list of publishing houses.  Many have on-line perusal copies of partial scripts.  A word of warning, don't select a script if you have not read it completely. 

Theatrefolk is an excellent resource!  Check it out!  www.theatrefolk.com

Hope this helps!

Kevin

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Kevin Hayes
Toledo OH
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I'd look at Playscripts.com. They have a lot of material that isn't expensive and you can specify to the number of children you need to cast. :)

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Shira Schwartz
Chandler Unified School District
Chandler AZ
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Thanks so much.. great idea.. I sort of do that but also trying to save some time as to fit in all I have to thought maybe a few that have worked for people would be a quick answer.. thanks...

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Christine Dougherty
Theatre Teacher/Director
Delsea Regional School District
Franklinville NJ
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Some of my recent favorites-- Selfie, AP Theatre and The Worst Ten Breakups of All Time.  One of my oldest favorites is Jon Jorry's Love Death and The Prom.

Hope that helps

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Michael Johnson
Trinity NC
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A one act my high school is performing this fall is Competition Piece by John Wells.  It's a fairly large cast of 20+ roles and has a lot of simple and fun characters.  I hope this helps!

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Grace Alt
ITO Vice Chair
Wyndmoor PA
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Check out Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 plays in 60 minutes)}

It's a collection of over 100 mirco-plays that range from a few seconds to 2 minutes. most are comedic, many are satiric, and are few are creepy, touching, or just plain weird. You can choose how many plays and which plays you want to do. We're taking to the one act competition this year, and my students love it!

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Ken Buswell
Drama Teacher
Peachtree City, GA
http://mcintoshtheater.org/
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Great suggestions already here, here's a couple more:

Allison Williams' Postcards from Shakespeare or Drop Dead, Juliet! are both hilarious and accomodating of large casts (can be expanded/doubled as needed).

Lindsey Price's Circus Olympus is a pretty cool romp through several myths (including Arachne, King Midas) and can be expanded/doubled as needed. 

How large is large though? For our upcoming event 'Night in the Spotlight,' which is a precursor to our district's Individual Events competition, I make all 140+ perform. Those who are going to IEs will do all their pieces (duet musicals, solos, monologues, etc). but for the others I've assigned large group ensemble scenes, pulling from West Side Story (the war council scene), The Crucible (the courtroom scene) and Twelve Angry Jurors. Instead of a full one act, you could chop and present scenes from longer works? Just an idea, might not be what you're looking for at all!

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Phillip Goodchild
Theatre Arts Instructor/Assistant Department Head of English
Hillsborough County Schools
Ruskin FL
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Thanks to all who have posted in this thread.  We are always searching for strong one-act plays with large casts (over 20).  My middle school produces a one act each year at the state middle school festival.  We don't make cuts.  

The Audition, Seussification of Romeo and Juliet, Law & Order: Fairy Tale Unit were all great (and large with the option for extras/ensemble).  We have also seen large productions of Esperanza Rising, The Lottery, and Us & Them - all worked well with large casts.  And all are under 40 minutes.

This year we have 23 students - and of course they all want lines!  They are also not excited about montage plays, which rules out so many possibilities.

I'm looking at the following, and would love to hear if anyone has seen or done them and how they worked out ...

Homework Eats Dog and Other Woeful Tales

Rascals Under the Big Top (Pioneer - a melodrama, which we would try to present with appropriate music, movement and performance style).  I'd love to hear if anyone has done something similar!  And if anyone knows of any less-than-40-minutes, cast of 23 or more melodrama scripts!

And finally, totally different from anything the students have done (and anything I've done with middle school):  

Baghdad Zoo by Kevin Dyer.  

The publisher is Plays for Young Audiences   Plays for Young Audiences , which is a partnership between Seattle Children's Theatre and The Children's Theatre Company- Minneapolis.  They have some great scripts, though not many are large cast or short.  Baghdad Zoo has a group of children, the zoo animals (who speak a little, but primarily move and act), a couple American soldiers, and The Lost People of Baghdad, who have choral speaking.  

If you have seen it or produced it, I'd love to hear about it!

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Kristin Hall
Drama Director
Lincoln Public Schools
Arlington MA
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