FYP - SCRIPT IDEAS

Network
(Connor has Script)
Description:
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore.
Howard Beale, news anchor-man, isn’t pulling in the viewers. In his final broadcast he
unravels live on screen. But when the ratings soar, the network seizes on their newfound
populist prophet, and Howard becomes the biggest thing on TV.
The play also features a live onstage television studio and an onstage restaurant titled
Foodwork, where audience members can enjoy a three-course meal while watching the play.
The plot closely follows that of the 1976 film but uses stage devices and audio visual
technology to immerse the audience as participants. The audience becomes part of the play
both as diners and a studio audience. The distance between fact and fiction is reduced,
mimicking the blurring of truth and fiction in contemporary news media.
People, Places & Things
(Connor has Script)
Description:
An intoxicating new play about surviving in the modern world. Emma was having the time of
her life. Now she's in rehab. Her first step is to admit that she has a problem. But the problem
isn't with Emma, it's with everything else. She needs to tell the truth. But she's smart enough
to know that there's no such thing.
When intoxication feels like the only way to survive the modern world, how can she ever
sober up?

Killer Joe
(Script through Summon)
Description:
Killer Joe is set in a trailer park in West Dallas, Texas, in present day. It follows the story of
police detective and hit-man Joe Cooper. Joe is hired to kill the mother of a young drug
dealer, Chris, with Chris's father Ansel as an accomplice. However, Chris and Ansel cannot
afford to pay Joe, so Joe accepts Chris' innocent sister Dottie as a form of payment until the
debts can be paid. A definitively dysfunctional family gives in to its basest instincts and is
forced to face hidden truths in this twisted modern-day fairy tale.
Performed in fifteen countries and twelve languages since its 1998 stage debut, Killer Joe is
"a terrifically tasty potboiler… It has the enjoyable hairpin turns of the standard mystery
thriller, but it's the skewed shifting relationships that keep you hooked" (The New York
Times).
Now a critically acclaimed film adapted by the playwright and starring Matthew
McConaughey.

HTTPS://OFFTHEWALLPLAYS.COM/SEARCH-PLAYS-BY-CAST-SIZE/PLAYS-FIVE-ACTORS/

FLAT – TWO-ACT DRAMA PLAY ABOUT CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Description:
Andy’s losing it. Not in the way that most college students tend to, no. This is serious. In two
acts we are introduced to the mind of a young adult on the cusp of a mental break in this play
about conspiracy theories. Breakthrough or breakdown? You decide. In Flat, a drama in two
acts, Damon’s roomie no longer contributes to rent or the dorm in any way. To say Damon
has had enough is an understatement.
Jess, Andy’s girlfriend feels the disconnection between herself and her boyfriend growing
larger every day. The more she tries to close the gap the more he extends it with what she
believes are delusional ideas. Andy will argue that paying rent is insignificant in the grand
scheme of things and that his beliefs are just as valid as Jess’.
Nobody, including his own mother can get through to him.  Andy finds himself gravitating to
Ted, a considerably older fellow believer in conspiracy theories. In this drama, mental health
is examined in an honest and uncomfortable way from the people who suffer from it outside
of the person in question.
Suspending belief.  In belief itself.

Author: Alex Acuff
Type: Two-Act Play
Genre: Drama play about conspiracy theories
Cast: Main Characters 2 M, 1 F, Total cast 3M 2F 
Ages of the actors: Three young adults and two forties up. 
Suitable for: Older teens to adults to perform and watch
Length: 60 Minutes
Set: A living room. There are pictures on the wall of various things involving pop culture.
JESS and DAMON sit on a couch. ANDY sits in his chair.
Level of difficulty:  7/10 – showing the decline from conspiracy theorist into mental illness.

DAUGHTER LIKE YOU – FAMILY DRAMA SCRIPT

ABOUT LOSING A CHILD
Description:
A married couple still mourning the death of their child Abby who passed away fifteen years
ago are both struggling to keep their relationship alive.
David works as an engineer and his latest job will see him return to the small town where he
and Maria first met and fell in love. He brings Maria along with him with the idea to rekindle
their love but also for Maria to reconnect with her Sister Elle, who she has not spoken to in
over a decade.
Elle and Maria quickly make up, a little too quickly but Elle fears that her own daughter Sam
fifteen years old is focusing too much on a foolish career as a fashion model and is risking
destroying her education and chances of going to college. Elle enlists Maria to hang out with
Sam and to find out more for her, hoping that Sam will open up more to Maria than she ever
would to her.
Maria now starts a close relationship with Sam, unwittingly using her to fulfill her own
desires to be a mother at long last. If Abby, the child she had lost all those years ago was still
alive today she would be Sam’s age. Maria wants to help Sam become a model, going against
everything that Elle had asked of her and tries to convince Sam to come away with her to
London to begin her modelling future and where they can exist together as mother and
daughter. Secrets and lies come pouring out as everyone fights for what they really want; to
be happy.

Author: Simon Parker
Genre: Family drama script, three act drama script
Type: Three act drama script
Cast: 2M 3F
Ages of the actors: Three in their forties, two late teens, early twenties
Suitable for: PG 10 – heavy topic
Length: 2-2.5 hours
Set: Various houses but set can be minimal – for example the first scene just needs a large
sofa with a wicker chair next to it.
Level of difficulty: 8/10 – heavy piece dealing with family tragedy and loss. Performances
should be genuine.

THE GROUP SESSION – ONE ACT DRAMA ABOUT MULTIPLE

PERSONALITY DISORDER
Description:
The patients are meeting for the weekly group therapy session with their psychologist, Dr
Miller. The point of the session is to talk about their week and hopefully enable some healing
that will eventually see them progress to the point where they can become normal members
of society in this one act drama about multiple personality disorder.
Instead the members of the therapy session take it in turns to turn on each other.  Joanne, the
resident talker and bitch who should have been locked up for attempted murder, but pleaded
insanity instead, Meredith who has panic attacks, Caroline who has repeatedly tried to
commit suicide and Sarah, who never speaks are more than enough for Dr Miller to deal
with.  But one of them holds a secret, something that only she knows about the others. Put
enough pressure on a watched pot, and it’ll boil over.

Author: Lindsey Paulette
Type: Drama about multiple personality disorder
Cast: 5F. The gender of the doctor is immaterial so could be played by a male actor. 
Ages of the actors: Teens up to adults
Suitable for: Teens up to perform, all ages to watch
Length: 10-15 minutes
Set: A room in a mental hospital with a few chairs in a circle
Level of difficulty: 7/10 – character interactions.

THE PLAY’S THE THING – ONE ACT CRIME SCRIPT ABOUT THE
PERFECT MURDER
Description:
It was the perfect murder. And the perfect accident. Or so Greta thought. Deeply infatuated
by her good-looking actor boyfriend, her husband Charles appears to be nothing more than an
impediment to their happiness. She plans the perfect way to get rid of Charles, and make it
look like it was all an accident. When Larry, her lover, gives Charles (who is a well-known
actor) a script to read, she decides to ask Charles to ‘act out’ the script with them, and
supplies him with a loaded gun for the suicide scene… But she’ll have to learn the hard way
that there’s no such thing as the perfect murder in this one act crime script.

Author: Peter Pitt
Genre: Crime, drama
Type:  One act crime script
Length: Thirty minutes
Cast: 3M, 2F
Ages of the actors: One M in his fifties, two in their thirties and two in their twenties
Suitable for: All ages to watch. Adults to act in.
Set: A luxury apartment in London, furnished with 1930’s styled furniture. There is a large
couch, two armchairs, a writing desk, cocktail cabinet, a television set and a telephone
Level of difficulty: 7/10 – accents and period piece.