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Children's Plays
Young Audiences

Brain Drain -- In this tale of gentle trickery, Crocodile is ready to eat El Mono (The Monkey) when El Mono fools him with a diversion. Though Crocodile is faster and stronger than El Mono, El Mono uses his brains to outwit brawn, showing (at least sometimes) that the mind is faster than muscle. See the full script in MS Word.

The Tale of Blanca Flor -- Juan is a good dancer but a lousy gambler. One day, tired of losing his shirt, he says to himself, "I would give anything to be able to win when I gamble." Just then, El Diablo shows up riding a black horse and says, "Tell me what you want." When Juan tells him his desire to have a little bit of money and a mountain of luck, El Diablo grants him his wish, with the proviso that in five years, he must come to El Diablo's hacienda and obey three commands. For five years, he has phenomenal luck – but it comes time to pay the piper, and Juan sets off to find El Diablo. When he arrives, he meets Blanca Flor, one of El Diablo's three daughters, and with her help, he is able to complete the three commands. There is a moment when their love is in jeopardy because he forgets a command she gave him, but in the end they remember to love one another, and the story concludes happily.

Beware Of What You Ask For -- A story about the unintended consequences of desire, based on the South American tale The Rooster's Claw. Raúl and Sofía were very much in love. They had two children and worked very hard, and life rewarded them well. One day, Raúl disappeared on the way home from market, and Sofía never found out what happened to him. Her sadness turned to bitterness and she began to complain about everything in life. Realizing that she was alone and turning mean, she consulted the curandera, the healer, to find help. The curandera gave her the rooster's claw, which could grant wishes, but warned her that it was a little dangerous and not very reliable. Sofía didn't care: how much worse could her life get? The rest of the tale reveals her three wishes and their ironic consequences. She returned the rooster's claw to the curandera and stopped complaining because she knew that life could be strange than it was. See the full script in MS Word.
Middle Schoolers

Macbeth's Children: A Confrontation with William Shakespeare's Macbeth -- Macbeth's Children focuses on Fleance, the escaped son of the murdered Banquo. The play draws on a number of ideas, including the effect of violence (especially military violence) on children, what "masculinizing" does to men and women, and the cost for children in living in a world brutally directed by adults.

The Patron Saint of Geeks -- Bobby and Chad are close friends in the fifth grade. Classified as "geeks" in the school's social structure, they are harassed by Rad and his gang (a year older and members of the Boys Club football team) and the Pearls (a group of girls whose "clique" is very exclusive). Pushed by their bullying to the edge of their patience, Bobby and Chad contemplate using a gun to equalize the imbalance in power. The play not only examines the consequences of social stereotyping but also the choices the weak make when continually oppressed by the strong.

The Real Temple -- All of life is a journey, and Lorenzio finds this out literally when, in a waking dream, he falls through his mirror into a slightly wacky King Arthur-world that takes him on a search for beauty, strength, and wisdom. The play is done in vaudeville style, complete with Three Knights in a Daze, the nasty Grapunzel-Dunzel, the Saggin' Dragon, King Sale-O-Man, and the Voice of Density. (This could also be done by high school students.)

The Way -- Aviva Matthews is a very popular girl in school. She has everything going for her and is at the top. But one day she tries to break up a fight at school between a girl and her friend Ruby, and the incident affects her deeply. Studying Lao-Tzu's "The Way" in her World Religions class, she decides to use the power of meditation to end the violence that happens to children and that children do to each other, and she goes to her bedroom for a retreat. This leads to a confrontation with her friend Dink, who believes the whole adult world (which to her is the cause of all the violence) should be wiped clean so that things can be done over, and done right. They realize that both approaches are needed: confrontating injustice must be balanced with the search for peace and harmony. Spiritual power comes only when it engages with history, and violence can only be met with love and risk and courage.

Teenagers

No More Prisons -- Clique, a young woman, is on a quest. She has been tagging every available surface with the phrase "No More Prisons." On one of her "outings," she is found by QT, a counselor working with at-risk youth, who has been looking for her to ask her questions about what she is doing and to offer her help. Clique's story unfolds the life of her sister, Johanna, imprisoned for a murder she committed at the age of seventeen.

The Most Dangerous Woman in America -- Using the format of a lecture, this play presents a one-woman rendition of Emma Goldman, focusing on both the life and the ideas that motivated it. When the play opens, Goldman is approximately in her early fifties, about the time of her exile from the U.S. in 1920: stout, near-sighted, plain.

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