Family Relationships
Plays About Family Relationships
Find Dramas and Comedies about family issues. See below, plays that explore the emotional connections between parents and children, between brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives. There is love, hate, jealousy, betrayal and forgiveness.
In different societies and cultures, expectations of the shape of family relationships differ greatly: fathers and sons, fathers and daughters. mothers and sons, mothers and daughters. Relationships between step-mothers and their step-children have traditionally been unfairly portrayed as fraught with difficulty and used as a dramatic device for comic or dramatic effect.
Showing all 14 results
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$6.97 – $48.00
The Trunk
- 15 minutes
- 2 Male, 1 Female, Min/Max 2
Simple Set
A man is about to board a mysterious train when he is stopped because of the size of his luggage. What is in his trunk that he is so reluctant to part with? And where is the train going? In this 15-minute play, L. Elizabeth Powers bears witness to the fact that it’s never too late to take a different path.
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$11.00 – $80.00
N
- 100 minutes
- 2 Males, 1 Female
Diverse Cast, Drama
Adrienne Earle Pender’s “N” dramatizes the struggle between playwright Eugene O’Neill and actor Charles Sidney Gilpin in 1920, as they mount O’Neill’s first box office hit, The Emperor Jones. From rehearsal to Broadway run and, eventually, to the London tour — they fight over the inclusion of the “N” word in O’Neill’s script. To Eugene O’Neill, a word is just a word. For Charles Gilpin, who becomes the first black man to be honored by the Drama League of New York for his portrayal of the lead in The Emperor Jones, those six letters have the power to unravel everything that he has ever worked for. At stake for O’Neill? His artistic vision. For Gilpin? His entire career and family.
Downloadable PDF available. Diverse casting. Available in USA Script Format Only prior to publication.
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$9.00 – $60.00
Refraction of Light
- 100 minutes
- 2 Males, 2 Females, Min/Max 4
Professional, Simple Set
On the day World War II ends, another war begins. Joe Taylor, an African-American veteran decides he wants to marry Nettie French, a childhood sweetheart, and buy the house belonging to Rose Beauchamp, a white teacher who has befriended both Nettie, daughter of Rose’s deceased best friend, and Joe and encouraged their friendship and academic aspirations. Rose’s prejudice rears its head and her reluctance to sell her house to Joe sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy all their futures. Harry Rosen, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi Germany, enters their lives and helps them find their way home.
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$5.00 – $30.00
Inside and Out
- 10 minutes
- 1 Male, 1 Female. 1 M or F. Max 3, Min 3
Competitions, Fantasy, Simple Set
This 10-minute poetic play by Jean Klein dramatizes a mother’s attempt to reach inside the autistic mind of her young son. Characters include Jonah, the boy, his mother, Jonah’s mind. The play is a great change of pace in an evening of short plays and as an introduction to discussion groups and classes in social work and mental health settings.
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$5.00
A Slippery Slope
- 10 minutes
- 1 Male, 2 Females, Max/Min cast 3
Simple Set
In this 10-minute comedy play by P.A. Wray, a student at a Christian academy discovers some truths about the culture wars and his own family when he is forced to defend his oral report which contained facts at odds with the school’s ideology. Ideal for community theater or as part of an evening of short plays.
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$11.00 – $75.00
Romeo and Juliet in Fewer Words, Words, Words
- 50 Minutes
- 5+ Females 5+ Males Minimum 10 Maximum 20+
This adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” by Robyn Hilt pares down the original but retains the major plot points and beauty of the poetry. “Romeo & Juliet in Fewer Words, Words, Words” is an ideal choice for classroom presentation. All of the major scenes and plot points are intact, as well as the humor of the Nurse and Mercutio. Students take one role and develop that character through analyzing motives and decisions.
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$9.95 – $90.00
Sniper
- 90 Minutes
- 8 Males; 2 Females; Doubling Possible
Doubling Possible, Edgy Play
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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$9.95 – $90.00
An Evening With Joyce’s Women
- 100 minutes
- 3 Males 4 Females Max 12 Min 4
Community, Flexible Casting, Fundraiser, High School, Middle School
A trilogy of one-act plays, An Evening With Joyce’s Women allows us to enter the lives of three women from Dubliners by James Joyce. The frustrations, fantasies, and follies of Irish women who are also victims and victimizers of their mates and their society come to life in this trilogy of The Boarding House, Eveline and The Dead.
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$5.75 – $45.00
Campers
- 20 Minutes
- 1 Male 1 Female Max/Min 2
An “outdoorsy” couple on their honeymoon discover what it means to be caught, or bound together in love. This award-winning one-act comedy by B. A. Hite was a First Place winner, Actor’s Theatre; produced by Theatre Wagon of Virginia and Tidewater Community College. Simple set. Easy to stage.
Great fit for community theaters and high school competitions. Downloadable, printable PDF available.
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$11.00 – $70.00
The Unmasking of Yetta Breen
- 120 Minutes
- 5 Male, 5 Female, Min/Max 10
A full-length touching and funny ‘dramedy’ by Mickey Coburn, about a newly widowed woman and her changing relationships with her grown children. Yetta’s family expect her to remain ‘mama’: dependent and indecisive but Yetta has ideas of her own. After years of marriage, she wants to live for herself. But when the suitors begin to appear!!!! Will Yetta be able to emancipate herself from the role of “Jewish Mother”? Even if her new beau is the “likker” salesman?
Great for community and regional theaters. Downloadable PDF available.
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$7.95 – $75.00
The Dead
- 40 Minutes
- 1 Male. 4 Females
A one-act play adapted from James Joyce’s “Dubliners” by David Klein. During an annual Christmas celebration, Gabriel Conroy must cope with his doddering aunts, discover the true nature of his relationship with his wife. Gretta and confront his own academic pedantry. Somewhat condescending toward the provincialism of his friends, family, and even his own wife, he retires for the night only to discover that she has lived–and lives–a fuller, more vibrant existence than he could have previously imagined.
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$7.95 – $50.00
The Boarding House
- 40 Minutes
- 1 Male, 3 Females
Colleges, Community, Fundraiser, High School
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, uses 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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$7.97 – $75.00
The Hypochondriac
- 45 to 60 minutes
- 7 Males. 4 Females Max 11 Min 11 (Doubling Possible)
Simple Props, Simple Set
A one-act, satirical caricature on the practice of medicine, Human nature is revealed and pilloried in this comedy which skillfully skewers the medical profession, a narcissistic patient, and his conniving wife. The Hypochondriac (also known as The Imaginary Invalid) is as germane today as it was in Moliere’s France.
Easy to produce on stage or in a classroom as reader’s theater. (We have special copying rates for classroom use.)
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$7.97 – $75.00
All Dressed Up
- 45 Minutes
- 4 Males, 2 Females, Max/Min 6
In All Dressed Up, a one-act high school comedy / drama, Melissa has been taught what she is “supposed to” learn as a young woman: to be dependent, to bat her eyelashes, never to win a game against a boy. How well does this education help her when she has to make important decisions about sexual activity. Great for teen drama groups and touring. PDF download available.
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