One Act Plays

" The Accidental Adjudicator" comedy for drama group ISBN: 978-1-872758-35-0  £4.00 each  Royalties £25 per performance

The local drama group are about to put on their first Shakespeare with "Macbeth" and the thrusting new director has decided to enter the play into the county "Play of the Year Competition."  As they make their final preparations they await the arrival of the adjudicator who is reputed to be a retired drama lecturer with a drink problem.  The stagehands come in with the alcohol for the Christmas party and are told to put it into the nearby drama store and lock the door.  They do the first but not the second.  The adjudicator arrives, speaks to a deaf FOH person who tells him to wait in the drama store.   The director returns and unfortunately locks the store.  Meanwhile the adjudicator's taxi driver arrives with a clipboard that's been left in the car.   He's mistaken for the adjudicator, feted like a lord and the play begins.   The noises from the store are ignored as thought to be local yobs and the driver is then treated as the adjudicator for the rest of the evening - including his final somewhat "down-to-earth" adjudication!

Freely download first part of "The Accidental Adjudicator"

 

"BILL"  Drama for l female;   ISBN 1-872758-03-7;  £3.00 each ;  Royalties £15 per performance

The play opens with an old lady bringing on a tea tray for herself and her husband who is changing upstairs.  While she waits she remembers all the events and memories that the house holds for them.  Her husband's tea grows cold, she makes a fresh pot and still he does not appear and we eventually realize that he’s not actually there, leaving us with a touching insight into old age and loneliness.

(First performed by West Bridgford Drama Society, Nottingham)

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"5T RULES -O.K?" A drama for a class of secondary age pupils + teacher;  ISBN 0-906-66065-3;  £4.00 each  Royalties £25 per performance

Late one Friday afternoon a group of pupils at a comprehensive school decide to stage a sit-in at the top of a classroom block, at the same time reluctantly taking hostage one of their teachers.  They are at first ignored by their headmaster until circumstances eventually force him to change his mind.

(Performed in competitions throughout the UK.  First published by New Playwrights Network of Macclesfield.)

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"DANNY BOY" Drama for 2m +lf (doubling) or 5m+3f (singly);  ISBN 0-863-19016-2;  £4.00 each  Royalties £25 per performance

A young man working in a shoe shop decides there must be more to life and joins the Territorial Army for excitement.  The play finds him on a mountaintop in winter slowly dying from hypothermia as he remembers the events and the people that led up to his present predicament.  Ultimately he is faced with an agonising decision upon which his very survival depends – whether he can kill and eat a tiny mouse.

 (First published by New Playwrights Network of Macclesfield and winner in several UK drama competitions.)

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"TICKING" Drama for 6f or 6m or unisex;   ISBN 1-872758-05-3;  £4.00 each;  Royalties £25 per performance

Set in a subterranean living complex in post-nuclear Britain the inhabitants have been convinced by the governing authority that no life exits on the surface.  A rebellious individual leads a group into a forbidden area to show them something that will change their minds – an old-fashioned pocket watch that has been dropped from above - but his uprising is quashed when one of the conformists deliberately "accidentally" destroys the article and the others reluctantly return to their conformity.

(First performed by Castle Douglas Drama Society, Scotland)

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"DIAGHILEV'S BAG" Searing drama for 3m + 1 child ;   ISBN 1-872758-04-5;  £4.00 each  Royalties £25 per performance

The play opens with three men in overalls picking up something from the ground in the middle of the night.  They could be park-keepers or council workmen but they are not.  They are in fact policemen at the scene of a horrific suicide on a railway line putting pieces of human torso into a bag.  Their attitudes to the gruesome task are vastly different and the play concludes with a symbol of hope for the future, a runaway child coming on the scene and wanting to know what is in the bag.

(First performed by Peebles Drama Society, Scotland)

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"EXAMINATION" Drama for group of students of either sex plus 3f & 2m adults;     ISBN 1-872758-15-0;  £4.00 each;  Royalties £25 per performance

 The examination room is being prepared by two teachers.  The students file in nervously but there are two seats left vacant.  A girl comes in late.  The exam begins but the girl then stands up in her place and sullenly and silently appears to refuse to take part in the proceedings.  No-one can understand why she is doing this until the end of the play when we learn that her boyfriend has been so worried by the exam that he has taken his own life the night before due to the stress.

(First performed at the Mitchell Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent)

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 "ZOO" Comedy for 7f & 6m & Children ;    ISBN 1872758-17-7;  £4.00 each;  Royalties £25 per performance

What would have happened if humans had not won the race for evolution but monkees did?  Here we see a trip to the zoo in reverse - this time it's the behaviour of the stone-age humans, which is being observed by a visiting group of intelligent chimpanzees.

 (First performed by Whitley Chapel Young Farmers Club, Hexham and after winning several rounds of the National YFC Drama Competition reached the final in Blackpool, UK.)

Freely download first part of "Zoo"

 

“THE HAPPINESS TREE”  Comedy for 5f or 5m (doubling) or 38 singly;  ISBN 1-872758-19-3;  £4.00 each;  Royalties £25 per performance

An allegorical comedy about people in a far-off land who, though living in poverty, are willing to put up with their lowly humdrum existence until one day a tree is discovered that bears fruit which will change their lives, making everyone who tastes it become deliriously happy and forget their awful predicament.  This leads to problems with people failing to turn up at work and the people at the top losing control.  So what does the establishment do?  At first they ban it, making it’s possession illegal, but that doesn't work, so when all attempts at control fail, they are eventually forced to do what any civilized society must do with a problem they cant overcome –  they tax it !

Freely download first part of "The Happiness Tree"

 

"FLIGHT ZERO ONE"      Drama for 7 females & 5 males;  ISBN 1-872758-21-5;  £4.00 each;  Royalties £25 per performance

It is the early hours of the first day of January.  We see the inside of a fur trappers cabin in the snow-covered Canadian outback.  A small plane has crash-landed in the middle of the Rockies and we hear the appraoch of its passengers who now have to spend the night together.  They were all on their way somewhere : a pregnant young woman and her partner on their way to see a specialist, a frail old man and his wife on their way to see their grandchildren, a doting mother and her precocious daughter on their way to a TV audition, a grumpy businessman on his way to his next deal and two police officers with their Native-American prisoner who is on his way to court to face a charge of murder.

Freely download first part of "Flight Zero One"

 

"INCIDENT IN A STATION BUFFET"  A short dramatic sketch for 2f & 3m ;  ISBN:  9781872758251;  £3.00 each  Royalties £15 per performance

We see and hear the inside of a buffet at a busy ralway station.  There are three tables visible.  At one sits a prim and proper spinster of mature years;  at another sit two young male tearaways who are discussing their sexual conquests of the previous evening;  at the third sits a well-heeled woman flicking through a glossy fashion magazine.  A young man comes in carrying a cup and saucer.  He looks around expectantly ... he's on an unusual mission ... he's come to meet for the first time the birth mother who gave him away for adoption as a baby.

Freely download first part of "Incident"

 

"TELL THEM I CARE"  A short dramatic sketch for two females;  ISBN: 9781872758268;  £3.00 each  Royalties £15 per performance

Some jobs are harder than others.  What do you do when you're a social worker who has to go to a woman's house and try to persuade her to permanently sign over her two children who are in the temporary care of the Local Authority because the woman appears unable to give up her violent partner.

Freely download first part of "Tell Them I Care"