Comedy perhaps has an image problem in educational theatre: it gets treated as the lighter option, kinda fun, "something for the kids," or worse, something if actor's aren't ready for "real" drama.
Obviously, I'd push back on that hard. Comedy is one of the most difficult things to pull off on a stage, and when it works, it does something serious drama often can't: it sneaks past people's defenses and lands an idea before they realize they're thinking about it.
What separates the best comedies from the rest is that the humor is never random; it's there to hold something up to the light in a way that only laughter can. These four plays will make your audience laugh, about vanity, ambition, the cost of power, and what it means to finally be seen. Underneath all of it, each one has something genuine to say, which is what makes the difference between a good comedy and a great one!
The Nose is a riotous 60-minute musical farce based on Gogol: hopelessly vain Kovalyov wakes up one morning to find his nose has gone missing, and worse, it's having the time of its life. Through all of it, Matroyshka, his long-suffering servant, has been the only one telling the truth, and nobody's listening. It builds to a climax in which a man wrestles his own nose to the ground. Unforgettable.
The Ghost of St. Philomena's brings a new girl, a haunted Catholic school, and a vengeful ghost targeting queer students. Stevie finds a found family of misfits and a mystery that won't stay buried. Inventive, funny, and genuinely spooky, with as much room for your designers to go wild as your actors.
Mick and Beth Rule the School transplants Macbeth into 1989 high school politics, goth witches and all. Nerdy Mick just wants to be student council president, which is a modest ambition, until his twin sister Beth gets involved. What starts as a small act of scheming spirals into something neither of them can control, and the body count is higher than you'd expect for a school with a zero tolerance policy...
The Wizard Delivers (and Pinky Stays the Course) takes place where all great comedies do: behind a strip mall pizza parlor. There, a self-proclaimed guru known only as the Wizard dispenses college advice, hard truths, and the occasional existential crisis to teenagers on the edge of adulthood. She's the mentor they didn't know they were looking for. But mentorship is complicated: who do we trust to guide us across that threshold, and what happens when the person we've been following turns out to need guidance of their own?
Every script is free to read in full at gitelmangoodpublishers.com. Each title also comes with a free lesson plan and author essay, and Author Hour is available for any production that wants to bring the playwright directly to the cast.
-Jason