Staging a play is one thing, but staging a musical is something quite different! A musical is many times more difficult because your key actors must be singers and your singers must perform as actors. You can spend as much as you like, make the show technically as complex or as simple as you prefer. The music, the lyrics, the dialogue, the pathos, the comedy, and ultimately the energy of the performance are the heart and life of a musical. Scenery, lighting, costumes, and special effects are secondary.

We've designed our musical comedies to accommodate this problem. With every show we provide a rehearsal/performance CD with professional voices to help teach the songs to your young performers. It can be used in practice by your cast or even as a back-up for the show itself.

To help everyone we published a book titled Staging Musicals for Young Performers.  It covers everything from selecting the right musical to casting, rehearsing, developing the right choreography, preparing the sets and props, and how to find or make your costumes. It gives details about all the basics with sample forms to keep everything organized, a glossary of theatrical and musical terms, and how to acquire performance rights and get parental volunteers to help with the show's many production details. The book was written by Maria Novelly and Adele Firth, an actress in repertory theatre. Both collaborators have taught English and drama in America and Europe. Novelly is also the author of Theatre Games for Young Performers.

Scenes Keep Happening

Scenes Keep Happening, the latest release from popular author and playwright Mary Krell-Oishi, offers forty-eight true-to-life scenes for guys, girls and mixed casts. These scenes are written as teens speak with the drama and emotions of adolescence.

The scenes in this collection vary in length from five to ten minutes. Themes include bullying, dating, driving, sex, sports, vanity, drugs and more. Offering both humor and drama, these scenes make excellent contest scripts due to the reality of the characters, language and situations.

Sample scenes include: “Being a Woman,” “The Bully,” “Poetic Justice,” “The Secret,” “Alone on Prom Night,” “Facing the Enemy” and many more.

Make It Mystery

Best-selling playwright Craig Sodaro is also a best-selling author! His book, Make It Mystery, offers twelve royalty-free mystery plays to fit a variety of staging and casting needs. From classic farce to supernatural suspense, each one-act play has an element of mystery that is often laced with comedy. Sodaro serves up an assortment of gripping tales guaranteed to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.

This text is especially workable for middle school and high school students, but actors and audiences of all ages will revel in the fun and suspense of each of these plays.

Playwright Laurie Allen certainly knows how to please. Her first book, Thirty Short Comedy Plays for Teens, was so successful that we asked if she would write a sequel. Without hesitation she said, "I'd love to!" and added, "But this time why don't I make the book Sixty Comedy Duet Scenes for Teens? That will give your customers twice as much for their money."

We didn't hesitate either. "You're on; go to work," we said.

A few months later her new manuscript arrived. We read it and laughed through every page. Her scenes were as creative and true-to-life as her former work. She's clever, she's witty, but best of all her scenes are all on target for teens. They provide a wide variety of easy-to-stage scripts ideal for use in the classroom and/or for contests or variety shows.

This collection of scenes is for two performers in middle school or high school. The scenes are divided into three sections: (1) Two Boys, (2) Two Girls, (3) Boys and Girls. All scenes take place within the confines of school, and the characters are daring, outlandish, and uninhibited. They are people every teen knows and the topics are current.

Sample titles include "Text Me," "Mathematically Challenged," and "Mistaken Infatuation." Many of Allen's competition pieces have gone all the way to national speech and forensic competitions.