One-Acts Written for (or Edited for) High Schools 
Quick Jump List – Short Plays
Mime in a Box
The Queue
All About Biffo
Brain Sucking
Corybungus
Hole
Date Patrol
The Proposal
Cowboy South of Houston The Sign
Bee
On this page you will find fun, theatrically exciting plays for high schools, colleges, and universities. If you are a student director, there are numerous delightful and engaging short comedies and dramas to choose from. Most of these 10-minute plays, shorts, skits, and one-acts were produced in Off Broadway in New York City, and several have been published. A number of the plays have been slightly altered from their original Off Broadway versions in order to be more appropriate for a high school audience. Nontraditional and creative casting is highly encouraged whenever you are feeling inspired to do so.
La Mouche, © 2002 by Stephen Bittrich
3 Men (Non-traditional Casting Encouraged – 2 of the actors require an over the top French accent), 11 pages long, simple restaurant set--perhaps only a table and chair. Farce, Comedy, Ten-Minute Play.
Can a waiter be too attentive? Yes!! La Mouche takes place in a French restaurant in New York. The jumping off point is the old cliché of a man finding a fly in his soup... with some unexpected new twists.
On a personal note, I think this may be my strongest short play. There is a four person version of this play. La Mouche is appropriate for a high school audience.
Jubilation, Mississippi, © 2011 by Stephen Bittrich4 Men, 1 Woman, (Nontraditional Casting Encouraged.) 15 pages, simple set. Sci-fi, Suspense, Twilight Zone Genre.
Jubilation, Mississippi is an ode to the great TV series Twilight Zone by Rod Serling. A brusque and cynical traveler's car breaks down in a small town where the entire population is preternaturally happy.
top This version of Jubilation, Mississippi is slightly altered from the original to better suit a high school audience. The original uncut version can be found on this page.
Mime in a Box, © 2007 by Stephen Bittrich
3 Men, (Nontraditional casting encouraged. The Mime could easily be female.) 14 pages long, simple set. Comedy, Drama, Philosophical.
Mime in a Box takes place on the streets of the Village in New York City. Two friends vigorously test the bounds of what is real and what is imaginary with their friendly neighborhood street mime.
top Mime in a Box was originally performed by Vital Theatre in New York City, April, 2001. This version of Mime in a Box is slightly altered from the original to better suit a high school audience. The original uncut version can be found on this page.
The Queue, © 1995 by Stephen Bittrich. (Revised Draft: Oct 2000)
2 Men, 1 Woman (Nontraditional casting encouraged. The woman's part is 2 lines at the end), 10 pages long, simple set. Comedy.
The Queue takes place in the waiting room of a New York City casting director. One obnoxious American actor does his best to ruffle his fellow British actor before the audition.
top The Queue was first presented by Vital Theatre Company in New York City, October, 2000. This version of The Queue is slightly altered from the original to better suit a high school audience. The original uncut version can be found on this page.
All About Biffo, © 2013 by Stephen Bittrich
2 Men (Nontraditional casting encouraged.) There is also a brief off-stage voice), 10 pages long, simple set. Comedy.
All About Biffo is a nod to the classic movie All About Eve with Bette Davis and Anne Baxter. A young radical and reckless clown challenges the spotlight of a veteran play-by-the-rules clown-colleague. An excting and challenging element of this play is the theatricality of putting on clown make-up during the performance.
All About Biffo is appropriate for a high school audience.
top
Brain Sucking,© 1992 by Stephen Bittrich
2 Men, 7 pages (plays close to 13-14 minutes), simple set. Southern comedy.
Brain Sucking takes place on a back porch in South Texas. Greeley recounts his tale of alien abduction to his best friend, Ed, while also revealing some rather questionable recent behavior toward his fiancée.
Brain Sucking is appropriate for a high school audience.
(The production photo is by Lee Wexler.)
top
Brain Sucking was a finalist in the Actor's Theatre of Louisville's "10 Minute Play Contest" in 1994. It was one of the few ten minute plays (out of about 1800 submissions) to be chosen that year to be produced at their Victor Jory Theatre, December, 1994. The short was directed by William McNulty with the following cast:Greeley........Dustin Longstreth
Ed.............Eric Shephard
Brain Sucking was published in the April, 1995 issue of Dramatics magazine, a magazine geared toward theatre educators. It was expanded into a full-length play, called Home of the Great Pecan which was subsequently published by Broadway Play Publishing.
Corybungus, © 1991 by Stephen Bittrich (Revised: February, 1994)
2 Men (Nontraditional casting encouraged.)
7 pages, simple set. Comedy.Corybungus is, according to a loony bookstore customer, a word mistakenly excluded from the voluminous Oxford English Dictionary. Chaos ensues when the slightly unhinged customer attempts to return his "OED," (sans receipt, no less) which he insists is defective and "missing words." This fast moving skit is an affectionate nod to the Bookshop sketch created by Monty Python.
top
Corybungus was first presented by Off Broadway in 1995 and updated in an evening of my comedy shorts called Big Apples produced by the Drilling Company in New York in 2003. This version of Corybungus is altered from the original to better suit a high school audience. The original uncut version can be found on this page.
Hole, © 2010 by Stephen Bittrich1 Woman, 2 Men, (Nontraditional casting encouraged.) 10 pages long, simple set. Special lighting. Drama.
Hole is set in a mine cave-in in West Virginia. This piece was originally presented in an evening of one-acts on the theme of faith. The three characters have different types of faith. The young Millsap has faith that God will protect them, Brody has faith in herself to find a way out, and Murphy, the old timer, is devoid of faith. A fun thing about this piece is that it starts in the dark, and is lit only with the light that they find. There is music to the song. Contact me for an mp3 of the tune.
Hole is appropriate for a high school audience.
top
Hole was originally performed by The Drilling Company Theatre in New York City, May, 2010. The short play was later published by Smith & Kraus in The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2011 (Contemporary Playwrights Series), edited by Larry Harbison. There is a draft of a full-length version that exists, but has not been fully developed.
Date Patrol, ©1989 by Stephen Bittrich
1 man, 3 women, 18 pages long, simple apartment set. Comedy.
Poor clueless Bob shows up to pick up his date and ends up facing an interrogation to rival The Spanish Inquisition.
top This version of Date Patrol is appropriate for a high school audience. There is an uncut version which is not online. The first incarnation of Date Patrol was called Inquisition and was produced by the company Second Generation at the Producer's Club Theatre in New York City in September, 1989.
The Proposal, © 2006 by Stephen Bittrich (Revised: Sept 2007)
1 Woman, 1 Man, 7 pages long (runs longer), period costumes, representative set. Period drama.
The Proposal takes place in Regency Era England (the time of Jane Austen). Julia Hightower, a progressive, headstrong young woman is cornered in the garden by a rich, rakish suitor who has a secret about her.
The Proposal is appropriate for a high school audience.
top
The Proposal was originally presented by The Drilling Company in New York City in June, 2006 and is published in 2006: The Best Ten-Minute Plays for 2 Actors.
Cowboy South of Houston © 1995 by Stephen Bittrich. (Revised Draft/January 2003)
1 Man, 1 Woman, 9 pages long, simple set. Comedy, Rom-Com.
In Cowboy South of Houston a cowboy tourist wonders into a Soho, New York art gallery in full of avant-garde art he can't understand and gets more than he bargained for when he encounters an aggressive artsy Soho native.
top Cowboy South of Houston was first presented Off Broadway at the New Dramatists Theatre in NewYork City in November, 1991. This version of Cowboy South of Houston is slightly altered from the original to better suit a high school audience. The original uncut version can be found on this page.
The Sign, © 2004 by Stephen Bittrich
2 Men, 8 pages long, simple set. Drama.
Two old friends meet up in an old tree they climbed as children on the day of the funeral of the beloved sister of one of them. The Sign was first produced by Access Theater Access Theater in New York City in June, 2004.
top This version of The Sign is slightly altered from the original to better suit a high school audience. The original uncut version can be found on this page.
Bee, © 2005 by Stephen Bittrich (Revised: June, 2006)
1 Man, 2 Women, 11 pages long, simple set--a chair and special lighting. Dystopian Drama, Suspense.
In an unsettling, Kafkaesque future, when people have numbers for names, a man named LEE72 is summoned for an interview when his companion disapears.
top
This version of Bee is slightly altered from the original to better suit a high school audience. The original uncut version can be found on this page.
The picture on the top left is from the original production of Bee and features Ron Dreyer and Kelly Grant (third cast member, Karen Tsen Lee not picured here) performing Off Broadway at The Drilling Company Theatre in New York City, December, 2005.
Below are stills and art from a student film production of Bee created by TLU Dramatic Media, done with the author's permission (and collaboration to tweak the script for film).
top
