Drama
SKITS
Some of these skits are from “the days of yore” (late 1990s) back when I first started teaching. When I first put up my website I was in a hurry to get them posted so I just scanned the pages instead of retyping everything. I think everything is still legible. (And history hasn’t changed, so the content should be as fresh as it ever was. 😉
- A skit about Fort McHenry
- “A Window Into the Stomach” a skit about the discovery of digestion
- A skit about Thomas Edison
- A skit about Marconi (inventor of radio)
- A readers’ theater skit called “The Political Soap Opera Before Christ” (approx. 300-100 BC) (This one is more recent–spring 2011.)
More science skits:
In my “Elements” curriculum there are five more skits, all focusing on the discovery of elements on the Periodic Table.
FULL-LENGTH PLAYS
NOTE: My only real restriction on the use of these scripts is that no one publishes them without my permission. Please don’t upload them to other sites and don’t post them on teacher resource sites. Just post a link to this page. Thanks!
- “Arabian Nights” A full-length play script (running time about 2.5 hours)
I wrote this script back in 2011 for our homeschool Classical Theatre group. We had about 50 kids involved in the play so it was a BIG production. I spent endless hours reading huge volumes of tales from various sources and periods in history, and pulled out the best of the best for use with family-friendly theater. I did some tweaking but tried to stay as close to the original as I could. Reading this script is a legitimate literary activity, and is worth the time spent on it. (For more info on the sources, there is an info page at the beginning of the script.)
If you can’t perform a play but want the fun of doing so, try doing it as Reader’s Theater, where you just sit in a circle and read the script together, each person playing different parts. Add plenty of passion/humor where appropriate when you read your lines!
If you would like to use this script for a large-scale production (public performance), email me and let me know (not so much for the financial aspect, but mostly because I would love to see what you do with it!). If you are just going to use it in a very small setting, you aren’t under any obligation to contact me. Either way, please have a lot of fun with it!
“Treasure Island” (slightly adapted for staging by and for youth)
This download is the actual script I used many years ago with our homeschool classical theater group. (Apologies for small typos if you find some!) To make staging easier (and slightly less violent), I have the story being told as a bedtime tale, with the mother and child at the side of the stag. I also added names for members of the group of pirates and gave each at least a line or two. This is wonderful if you are doing the play with a large group of little boys who all want to be pirates but who don’t want a lot of lines. Overall, though, I tried to really stay true to the actual novel as best I could. (I don’t like plays and movies that change too much from the original book, so I always try to be as faithful as possible to the original work.)
“Canterbury Tales for Gentlefolke” (running time is over 2 hours)
This script took me almost a year to write. I read several translations of Chaucer’s original work (which is very lengthy indeed). Did you know that the Canterbury Tales is one of the world’s longest poems? The entire book is written in verse, with each line being exactly ten syllables. It’s amazing! I brought some of Chaucer’s rhymes into my script in various places, where appropriate. It was not possible to make the whole play rhyme, but I did want to make sure my script was a true to the original as possible. I always try to stay true to the “flavor” of the original work, which is sometimes very tricky in places where the original is rated PG13 or worse. In the Canterbury Tales, I had to outright omit a few tales, but in other cases I found ways to adapt them enough to make them fine for family audiences while still staying very close to the original. Are there places where a whoopie cushion is used for a fart sound? Yes. Does the Devil appear in any tales? Yes. Does the wife of Bath call herself “hot-blooded”? Yes. But don’t worry, nothing ever gets out of hand. This play is sophisticated enough for adults and silly enough for kids.
This script makes a great reader’s theater activity. If you have only a small group, just assign each person more than one role. (Every time a new tale is told, new roles are assigned.) You can be confident that your readers are having a high-quality literature experience.
If you would like to perform this play and you plan to draw a sizable audience and will be charging admission, consider whether you might be able to donate a small percentage (10-20% ?) of your earnings to the playwright (me). Also, if you are able to take some pictures of your production and email them to me, that would be totally awesome. !!
“Much Ado about Nothing in Queen Elizabeth’s Court” (running time- about 2 hrs.) Posting this is on my “back-burner” list of things to do. I will get around to it eventually. / Summary: This is a play within a play, with an historical frame tale around Shakespeare’s play. The frame tale introduces the Shakespeare authorship question and features Edward DeVere. The authorship question in this play is resolved by proposing a cooperative effort (with plenty of humor and a surprise ending!). If you are interested in this script, just email me and let me know. ejm.basementworkshop@gmail.com
“Cyrano de Bergerac” (I used to have this play listed with a publisher in the UK, but recently the copyright has reverted back to me, so I will try to get this up for free download sometime before the end of 2018.) This is just about my all time favorite play. I love the Gerard Depardieu movie version (in French with English subtitles). The running time for this script is a little shorter than the plays listed above, if I remember right.