Family Roles
Plays About Family Roles
Family members play a role they either adopt or is forced upon them. Family roles include the superhero, the leader, the caretaker, the scapegoat and the joker. Discover plays where family roles are assumed, disputed and fought for.
Plays about family roles are fertile grounds for scenes of teen rebellion against authority of a mother or father. Family roles shape how we interact with each other in the family system and theatre can shine a light on characters with a family role they want to change.
Showing all 12 results
- $6.97 – $48.00
The Trunk
- 15 minutes
- 2 Male, 1 Female, Min/Max 2
Competitions, Fantasy, Simple Set, Small Cast
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.
Read More - $7.99 – $110.00
Angel Band
- 110 Minutes
- 14 Males, 5 Females, Max. 19+/Min 15
Drama, Edgy Play, Large Cast, Lust, Prejudice, Tolerance
Leaders of the snake-handling Signs Following Church in the hills of Appalachia are threatened by the snakes they handle to prove their Godliness and by the law enforcement and child welfare agencies of the surrounding community. They live side-by-side with the Blue People, a society of outcasts whose skin is marked by a blue skin tone. Into the mix comes Jay, a shy, possibly autistic, journalist intent on uncovering the secret world of these hidden cultures.
Read More - $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.
Read More - $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.
Read More - $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.
Read More - $9.00 – $70.00
The Pinch Hitter
- 30 minutes
- 3 Males, 2 Females, Min/Max 5
A one-act family comedy by Jean Klein. A woman is pushed to the limits by the needs of her family. Her husband is overwhelmed by a new business venture, two of her children are self-absorbed, and her eldest son copes, with her help, with mild mental retardation. What will they do when she goes on strike?
Great for middle school, high school, community theater, school competitions, and groups for women. Downloadable, printable PDF available.
Read More - $7.00 – $75.00
Oregon Fever
- 30 minutes
- 3 Males, 3 Females, Min/Max 6
In this one-act drama Joshua Blanchard is getting ready to leave Kansas to head west on the Oregon Trail in l835. On this climactic day, his youngest son dies, his daughter decides to marry and stay at home, and he has an important confrontation with his wife.
Performs well for middle school, high school, community theater. Great for Reader’s Theater, especially tied into a history or social studies class.
Read More - $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.
Read More - $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.
Read More - $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.)
Read More - $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.
Read More - $11.00 – $90.00
Hymn to the Chesapeake
- 95 Minutes
- 5 Males, 5 Females, Max/Min 10
This award-winning, full-length play with music is filled with the poetry of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Robert P. Arthur weaves fragments of conversations and traditional melodies to portray the love and heartbreak of its watermen and women–the love of the sea, a mother for a child, a man for a woman. Easy to stage with a variable cast, this haunting drama can be performed easily by high school, college, community, and professional theaters.
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