Hi mr. inevitable,
Due to significant illness, this may very well be the only thread I post to this week, so be thusly honoured, and apologies to all for my absence.
I suppose it depends on how many roles you're expected to cast for because in modern theatre, a cast of around 7 is considered very large, especially for a short piece. Having directed (and cast) many a play, I can basically guarantee that you will audition more women than men, so this is always someting to struggle against.
Anyway, here I go:
Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel (5 F, 3 M) - a beautiful play, I can give you info on learning Irish accents if you choose this one. All the roles are complex and challenging, and there's an opportunity to have a crazy pagan dance scene - for the production I was part of, we had a traditional céili dancer in who taught us some awesome moves. This is a two act play, but because it's an ensemble piece, it flows really well, but still it's probably way too long for you, but if you love it, maybe it's worth fighting for?
Animal Farm, Guy Masterson - this is actually a one man show which our theatre adapted for our teen acting company for a large cast. It's fairly easy to adapt as Masterson has written his script in a way that designates each character and a narrator. We basically reassigned all the narrator lines to characters in the play. Because we're talking about animals, the gender of most roles is unimportant. I had some lovely emails with the playwright where he authorized me to do the play, but the people who hold the rights to Orwell, and indirectly to this play, are assholes, and after six months the never responded to my rights application, but since I had the playwright's consent we went ahead with it anyway. You can basically cast the play with some strong actors and have them play multiple roles, this play is probably at least an hour long, so again, probably too long for you.
This is a Play, Daniel MacIvor - A play about a play. ( 2F, 1M) This one's around 30 min. so probably more in your ball park, not much of a challenge to direct this one - the roles are pretty obvious and easy to figure out - there's only 3 roles, but you could consider double casting it and doing it twice. It's pretty funny, and especially funny if you're a theatre dork.
The New Step, Leonard Cohen ( 3 F, 1M) The male role is tiny - I'm pretty sure he only gets two lines. This one's under 30 min. with only three scenes and it comes from the book of poetry "Flowers for Hitler" - in spite of the provocative title, the plays it self is actually a fairly gentle piece - a study of beauty. I actually directed this with 3 actors, with one woman as the main role, another woman as the beautiful and ugly women, and another actor as light tech and male role. It was a wonderful experience.
Harold Pinter - a great playwright with a large collections of plays, some of which are fairly short, but normally only casts of 5 or less.
Antonin Artaud - The Spurt of Blood, it's a big joke among most directors, it's short and totally unsuitable for production at a highschool, it has the underbelly of society and in a final moment a giant hand of God is supposed to come down and crush everybody. You've seen the Monty Python giant foot stomping on everything? It's a parody of this play.
Anton Chekhov - The Bear (sometimes called The Boor) here's
a not-that-good translation that will give you an idea of what it's about. I saw it done with three actors, with the minor roles that were cut out, I think there's 6 roles total if you include the non-speaking roles. A friend of mine did an interesting production of it where Helena threw shoes at Grigori from the audience. It was fun.
Samuel Beckett - Play, (2f, 1m) here's
a link to a version the script. Even when done twice, the play was about 25 minutes long when I saw it. This play contains one of the most famous stage directions in history "Repeat Play" which means exactly what it says. This is a wonderful arty piece, since all three actors are just heads coming out of urns, you don't have to worry about much of anything. It's basically, boiled down, the spirits of three people entwined and a marriage/affair, desperately trying to get their story out. The script, as a director, has the potential to be executed like a piece of music.
Shirley Jackson and Brainerd Duffield - the Lottery (cast of 14), this one runs about 30 min, so it might be right up your alley, and nothing says theatre like a good stoning, basically doing this play is admitted "I had a short time slot and a lot of actors." It's sort of a theatre cliche in that way, but still, stoning someone to death... it's cool.
Dario Fo - The Virtuous Burglar, I can't remember how long this one is or who's in it, one of my classmates directed it at university.
There are also two books: Instant Applause and More Instant Applause, which are two books of "very short plays" which are always checked out of my office library. I haven't been through them myself, but they're very popular with people looking for pieces, so I imagine they're good.
Hope this helps a little.
This web-site is a good source to check out:
http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/ - but be warned they hold the rights to all the plays on this site and are very aggressive about you doing the play legally, hence paying for the rights and a copy of the script for each cast member.
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Topic: one-act plays? (Read 3666 times)