Welcome to FreePlays.org

We love acting, drama, and the theater. We want to help you and your kids love it, too! We provide royalty-free scripts and other materials to help you out.

Scripts for kids
Help your child become a unique, self-actualized individual, able to express themselves, parroting no one, creating, and articulating their own thoughts and feelings! How? Hand 'em a script and make 'em learn their lines.
Title	Author	Rev	Summary	Min- utes	Cast Size	Role Descrip'ns	Notes	Other Formats	Other Versions & Languages	Resources
King Solomon and the Baker	Leo Heska	1	Greedy baker gets his due.	5	4	1m, 1f, 2e		text		stills video audio
Hansel and Gretel	Leo Heska	1	Parents abandon 2 kids in forest, kids outfox evil witch, find their way home.		6	2m, 3f, 1e		text
Coyote and the Frost Giant	Ashley Heska	1	Coyote outfoxes Frost Giant, lives.		7	7e		text
Susan and Her Brothers	Chris Guyotte	1	A girl finds that she has her own strength.		8	4m, 2f, 2e	Parts, genders flexible (newsboy can be a newsgirl, etc.)
Domingo Siete	Ashley Heska, Leo Heska	1	The adventures of two hunchbacks, fairies, and Ogres. Based on a Mexican folk tale.	12*	9 to 19	9e to 19e	Narrator and extra fairies and villagers optional
The Lantern and the Fan	Ashley Heska, Leo Heska	1	Young wives' quest. Invention of lantern and fan. Based on a Japanese folk tale.	8*	12	3m, 5f, 4e
The Monkey and the Crocodile	Leo Heska	1	Monkey outwits crocodiles. Based on a folk tale from India.		3	1m, 1f, 2e	Parts could be split
Meat of the Tongue	Leo Heska	1	Sultan learns to nourish his wife emotionally		5	2m, 2f, 1e	Difficult to cut characters
I'll Be Wiser Next Time	Leo Heska	1	Jack makes dumb mistakes		3-5	2m, 1f, 2e	Can be cut to 2 characters
*"read-through" time does not include scene changes, stage business, bows, applause, or laughter.

Scripts for grownups (note: we really mean it - some of these plays contain themes and language unsuitable for children)
Title	Author	Rev	Summary	Min- utes	Cast Size	Role Descrip'ns	Notes	Other Formats	Other Versions & Languages	Resources
The Book of El	Leo Heska	2	Rabbis query the deity "Why?" and get answers.		9+	5m, 2f, 1+ m os, 1+ f os	Based on a story by Daniel Munksgaard

Abbreviations
m: male	f: female	e: either male or female	ns: non-speaking	os: offstage

Contribute

Notice for those living near Batavia Illinois: Join us for "Friday Night Write" May 12th through June 9th!

Would you like to help enrich the world, and other people's lives, by sharing your own scripts? Have you modified a script you got from FreePlays.org and you'd like to share your modified version? Did you record the performance and you'd like others to be able to see and/or hear it? Here's how, and here's where. If you want to, you can claim bragging rights as one of the first 10, or 100, or 1000 submitters of scripts. Or yours may remain an anonymous gift.

Here are some other ways of getting started, and helping FreePlays.org help others:

Read some of the source stories, get inspired, write a play, send it to us. We'll publish it.
Participate in the "Around The World In 40 Plays" project.
Hold a few scriptwriting parties.
Assign plays to your Drama, English, or Creative Writing class. Tell them about FreePlays.org, and recommend that they give their script to the world. Most kids are naturally generous, and love the idea. Most (but not all) parents will agree, on their children's behalf to allow FreePlays.org to publish the works.
Just give it a try. Think up your own story ideas, or use public-domain source materials available from us, or from the internet, or from 100-year-old books. Go for it! Write a script.

Maybe you're not an author, or don't think you are.

Are you sure? Don't sell yourself short. You may be able to write a script for a kids' play that people can use and enjoy. Think about it. Give it a try. Are you already a writer, and you wonder how writing a play is different? Here are some playwriting tips.
If we simply cannot convince you to write, we can still use your help:

Editing
Typing
Writing e-mails
Maintaining pages
Hosting torrents
Getting the word out
Translating plays into other languages

Communicate

Besides writing to Paul (the maintainer of this site), you may like to communicate with other folks interested in FreePlays.org. Maybe you'd like to make suggestions, or ask questions, or just listen in to what people are saying about FreePlays.org. You may do it by subscribing to the mailing list (this is done just by sending any e-mail message to freeplays-subscribe-request@netpals.lsoft.com from your own e-mail account). In reply, you'll get a welcome message that explains how to send e-mails to the distribution, and how to unsubscribe from the mailing list.

This is a community effort, made up of diverse helpers. They have expressed a variety of viewpoints and thoughts about FreePlays.org. Click here if you're interested.

Here is a message for playwrights, and for anyone concerned about the effect of FreePlays.org on their profession..

Here is a message for teachers, who may consider allowing (or assigning) their students to write a play. Here it is in text format, and here it is in .rtf, nicely readable/printable by most word processors.

Here is a message for parents, who may consider permitting their child to publish a play on FreePlays.org. Here it is in text format, and here it is in .rtf, nicely readable/printable by most word processors.

If you believe a work on FreePlays.org infringes your copyright, go here.

Commune with the muses, who inspire us (if we're lucky)(and practice/rehearse).

All works on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. In short:

You are free to print, copy, read, use, distribute, modify, and perform any and all of these works without royalty.
If you distribute these works in any form (including recordings of performances), with or without modification, you must grant these same royalty-free rights.

For details, see Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License either here or here

This site is part of the Info Ring. Information wants to be free! So make some free information.

Welcome to FreePlays.org

Scripts for kids

Scripts for grownups (note: we really mean it - some of these plays contain themes and language unsuitable for children)

Contribute

Communicate