One-Act-Plays -- Plays

Click on each blue column header to sort the plays by that header.

Name	Genre	Length	Cast	Audience	Synopsis
A Night Without Music, TV, and Gossiping	Comedy	25 min.	6 total (6F) (6-11 actors possible)	Youth	Five teenage girls are having a sleepover. It’s all fun and games until a witch casts a spell forcing them to go the whole night without music ... TV ... and ... gossiping! Dun dun dun! To kill time, the girls try everything from Charades to pillow fights. Eventually, the girls might just learn a lesson or two about life, and help each other out along the way.
Abbott and Costello	Comedy	10 min.	2 total (2E)	Youth	In this new take on Abbott and Costello’s famous comedy skit “Who’s on First,” two teenage performers try, rather unsuccessfully, to rehearse a scene for their drama class. What they succeed in performing is a hilarious scene full of wit and comedic miscommunication.
Celebrity Sighting	Comedy	10 min.	2 total (1F,1M)	Youth	This zany comedy takes fanaticism to the extreme! Overzealous Ronnie has waited his entire life to meet his favorite movie star/dream girl. Lucky for him, today is the day his dream comes true.
Criminal on Board	Comedy	10-15 min.	2 total (2M)	Youth	Steven needs some extra money, so he takes in a boarder named AJ. AJ seems like a perfect boarder, that is, until Steven comes across a wanted murderer’s profile in the newspaper. The murderer’s description matches AJ’s description to a T -- they even have similar names. Guess who the murderer has killed before...landlords! Will Steven be able to get out of the house alive? “Criminal on Board” is a murderously funny farce.
Cure	Drama	30 min.	3 total (3M)	Adult	The cure for AIDS has been found in a homeless man’s liver! Joseph, a biomedical researcher, can save millions of lives and make millions of dollars. All he has to do is murder the homeless man. After conversing with the man, Joseph struggles with the internal conflict of cold-blooded murder and the countless deaths caused by inaction.
Dueling Phobias	Comedy	10 min.	2 total (2M)	Youth	Edward is a germophobic. Tom is claustrophobic. When the two meet in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, they try to cure each other with some very unconventional methods. But can their phobias be cured? The war of the phobias is on!
Exterminating Fear	Comedy	10 min.	2 total (1F,1M)	Youth	Michelle finds David standing atop a chair and cowering in fear of a dead cockroach. Together, they work toward conquering David's phobia. But can it be conquered? And with words alone? Exterminating Fear is a comedic dissection of all fears and puts to the test the axiom, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
I, Thespian	Comedy	40 min.	25 total (9F,11M,5E) (12-45 actors possible) (Gender flexible)	Youth	Overdramatic, gossipy, eccentric ... everything you love about high school Thespians takes center stage in this farce! Toby and Kristen need to put down an activity for their college applications, so they join their high school Thespian Troupe. What starts off as a “normal” Thespian meeting with Thespis worshipping and drama gossiping transforms into a hectic battle for survival.
Just Ice	Comedy	20 min.	16 total (16E) (8-100 actors possible)	Youth	In this satire on the American court system, plaintiffs are suing large corporations for exorbitant amounts of money. For example, a man is suing Parker Brothers for not giving him real property when he bought Monopoly deeds, and a guy with a cold is suing Norton Antivirus for having an ineffective product. In this courtroom, these cases are anything but clear-cut.
Marvin Maybe, or, Arsenic and Old Grace	Comedy	15 min.	3 total (1F,1M,1E)	Adult	Marvin’s marriage sucks. Whatever love once existed has transformed into constant nagging and scorn. Rather than endure any more time with his wife, Marvin decides to kill himself. However, to his chagrin, things don’t go quite as planned…
Mistakes-R-Us	Comedy	35 min.	15 total (4F,3M,8E) (14-23 actors possible)	Youth	Wave bye-bye to your mistakes because Mistakes-R-Us is open for business! Just grab your credit card, dial their 1-800 number and sit back as they erase any (well, almost any) mistake you've made for a practical price. Sound too good to be true? It does to a snooping high school journalist who interviews the wacky owner in hopes of uncovering the truth about this company. Will this mean the end of Mistakes-R-Us, or is the idea of a perfect world closer than we thought?
Relativity (full-length)	Drama	100 min.	5 total (1F,4M)	Adult	Luther Owens, a high school physics teacher, has spent his whole life working on a time machine. As he gets close to finishing his machine, his wife threatens to leave him, and Luther must decide between his passion for his time machine and his passion for his family. This play is the newest addition to the burgeoning genre of “science plays,” as Relativity explores the principles of Einstein’s special relativity.
Sally Sells Seashells	Comedy	60 min.	20 total (8F,5M,7E) (13-100 actors possible) (Gender flexible)	Youth	Sally Sells Seashells is about a girl named Sally who sells seashells by the seashore. However this new twist on the famous tongue-twister has everything you'd want in a modern children's tale: forbidden love, mistaken identity, and the mob! Come join Sally in this fun farce full of hilarity.
The Transformation	Drama	40 min.	3 total (2F,1M)	Adult	Drew wakes up one morning, looks over, and sees a stranger lying in bed with him. The woman claims to be his wife, but Drew insists that she is not his wife -- his real wife has disappeared. Drew faces internal and external conflict as he struggles to come to terms with the disapearrance of the woman he loved and the arrival of this impostor.
Through the Window	Drama	20 min.	4 total (2F,2M)	Adult	Marc and Verna have a perfect marriage. However, when a family friend looks through a window into the house, she sees Marc having an affair. Now, Verna must decide whether true love conquers all or whether continuing infidelity demands divorce. “Through the Window” questions the very meaning of the word “love”.
Underwater Encounters	Comedy	5 min.	2 total (2E)	Youth	Two gastrotrichs (microscopic worms) on the bottom of the ocean come to terms with the meaning of life, love, and their short existence -- they only live for three days!
Writing in Wet Cement	Comedy -drama	25 min.	3 total (1F,1M,1E) (2-3 actors possible)	Adult	Both abducted by aliens, two complete strangers meet in the holding cell of an alien spaceship. The man, a pessimist and skeptic of love, and woman, an optimist and believer in fate, get to know each other through discussions about their experiences and opinions. While struggling to overcome past heartbreak, the two strangers create a spark of romance that could change their lives forever.