Play Scripts for College Student Actors

The listed playscripts for college students to perform avoid ” cuteness”. They reveal and question the darker aspects of human nature in a safe way and often with comedy.

Discover one-act comedy plays and full-length drama scripts for college and university students in theatre training programs and drama education. Many of the scripts are suitable for College readers’ theatre scripts.

Scripts for plays for performance by college students offer challenges for young actors. Many plays are suitable for college theater departments, theater classes and student drama groups.

The scripts are valuable plays for college students because they involve the audience in big questions of modern life, including drug misuse, sexual abuse, school shootings, faith, belief, racism, the environment, twists on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, famous marriages from history.

Check out plays available for virtual theatre and streaming video

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Rich’s Well-Made

$8.00 – $35.00

“Rich’s Well-Made”, set in the bathroom, is the second installment in the Playroom series. At its heart, Playroom is a series about exploring the hidden value of everyday spaces, as well as connecting (and reconnecting) with loved ones. Playroom is a theatrical experiment that examines the relationships of the nuclear family against the backdrops of a seemingly normal home.

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River Country

$13.70 – $175.00

A lilting poem for the stage, follows the passionate meeting of a man and woman who share neither language nor culture, yet fall in love. Through the rhythmic blending of language and song, the play combines poetry and both traditional and original melodies to illuminate this romantic union that ultimately overcomes geography and tradition.

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Robert Arthur’s Eastern Shore

$14.95

ROBERT ARTHUR'S EASTERN SHORE by Robert P. Arthur, twice nominated for Virginia's Poet Laureate: The book includes 4 one-act plays, a selection of his award-winning poems, and "Hymn to the Chesapeake," a play with music. The culture of the Eastern Shore watermen and waterwomen has long been threatened by the erosion of winds off the Chesapeake Bay and a dwindling supply of crabs and "ersters" to be harvested. These poems and plays celebrate that life and allow us, to share the triumph and the pain of finding one's livelihood and reason for being in an environment that is both beautiful and unforgiving.

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She’ll Find Her Way Home

$13.70 – $110.00

A full-length, African-American, post-Civil War drama. The only child of a deceased well-heeled Mississippi slaveholder. Martha Robb views her coming of age full of the adolescent longings and unending horizons promised by the victorious Union Army. and her quadroon complexion. She and her companion, Thomas, could forge different lives, lives absent of the old barriers … if they could only get past her mother.

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Snapshots

$11.97 – $55.00

Snapshots is a three-actor touching comedy that captures the high and low points of a 30-year marriage. Maggie ages from 27 to 60’s and Sy, her husband, ages 32 to 60’s. The Man represents various pivotal figures in their lives. Great for competitions, high schools, community theaters. Simple set: 3 cubes and a coat rack.

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Sniper

$13.70 – $160.00

Award-winning full-length drama for 8-10 actors, SNIPER is very loosely based upon the nation's first school shooting in 1975. The drama explores the mind and life of seventeen year old Anthony Vaccaro, who fatally shoots 9 citizens of a small town in upstate New York. Moving back and forth in time, Vaccaro searches his own past and remembers.... Great for high school, college, and community theater and discussion groups.

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Talk the Night

$8.00 – $35.00

Together, Drake and his grandfather, the dynamic vocal duo, broadcast call-in segments about aliens, werewolves, and all things crypto-zoological, but this particular show is about “time”: lost time, time outs, moments that feel like years,

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Ten After Ten: Ten 10-Minute Comedies

$13.70 – $110.00

In Ten After Ten, Jack J. Berry uses unique settings to highlight current problems and issues. These short comedies can be performed as a single evening or used separately as part of a larger presentation to underscore a point. Excellent for classroom, church, or senior facility.

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The Boarding House

$7.95 – $50.00

A one-act play, The Boarding House is a dramatic satire, by David.H. Klein, of the story by James Joyce. Mrs. Mooney, the owner of a boarding house of questionable reputation, exploits the wiles of her daughter Polly and the power of the Church to snare one of her more respectable boarders as her potential son-in-law.

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The Canterbury Tales

$13.70 – $170.00

This full-length comedy play with music brings rapid-fire dialogue to an old classic. With a flexible cast, it is an excellent play for high school performances, college theaters, or community productions. Elvgren has selected the bawdiest and most satirical tales for this version. A sense of Chaucer's language is maintained but is made accessible to a modern audience. (Lead sheets available)

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The Concise Christmas Carol

$9.00 – $45.00

A 50-minute condensed monologue adapted from Charles Dickens' Scrooge. How the ghosts who haunt him, eventually transform a lonely, stingy, bitter old man into a generous, infectiously cheerful humanitarian. D.D. Delaney, a professional actor, playwright, journalist, and poet has adapted the familiar holiday classic for the stage. Written as a monologue, it can also be performed by 4 actors. Ideal for Christmas celebrations, house performances, and readers theater. Downloadable PDF available.

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The Crying Tree

$13.70 – $125.00

A stunning drama with wonderful comic scenes, which received a special mention in the 2019 ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition. The story: in 2018, a black Congressman is caught up in a Trump impeachment battle and the alt right. Two hundred years earlier at the same plantation home, a slave is deciding whether to escape. Two parallel stories show how much has and hasn't changed about race and politics in America.

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The Dead

$13.70 – $145.00

A one-act play adapted from "The Dead" in James Joyce’s “Dubliners”
During an annual Christmas celebration, Gabriel Conroy has to cope with his doddering aunts, discover the true nature of his relationship with his wife, Gretta, and confront his own academic pedantry. He condescends to the provincialism of his friends, family, and his wife. But a big surprise about Gretta awaits him after he retires for the night.

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The Devil’s Due

$11.97 – $55.00

In The Devil’s Due, a one-act drama/comedy, an artist, Eric Talmadge, confronts the decline of his aesthetic powers and the possible dissolution of his marriage. In a satiric tour de force, a visitor—possibly a neighboring psychiatrist and possibly a more fearsome presence—offers him a possible way out of his dilemma. Is M. Boudreaux really an unorthodox psychiatrist practicing from his apartment in NYC or does he represent a power other than the mind? And what choice does he give Eric in order to regain his peace of mind and his artistic abilities?

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The Don

$15.97 – $89.87

41 Plays-On-A-Page convey slices of sometimes fantastical life. Sometimes biting social commentary, sometimes whimsical asides. These short dramas and comedies leave the audience guessing about their own lives and the world around them. William Heyen, National Book Award Finalist and major American poet, has turned his pen to the stage, with stellar results.

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The Hidden Stream

$13.70 – $16.97

A Poetry Collection For Spoken Word Theater. A moving, insightful autobiography combining poetry and reflection reveals the emerging life and art of a poet. Can be used selectively to construct short one-act plays. The poems are superb for spoken word theater, solo acting scripts, one-person shows, monologue plays scripts. See the script extract.

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