Building the High School Theater Canon

High school theater groups are hungry for large-cast short plays — exactly the opposite of what professional playwrights are usually encouraged to create.

Enter the innovative publisher Playscripts, Inc. and the Drama Desk Award-winning Keen Company, which have joined forces to bridge this gap in the theatrical landscape.

Keen Teens is a unique collaboration that combines both production and publication for new large-cast short plays — written by professional playwrights and developed with high school actors.

Together, Playscripts, Inc. and Keen Company identify and commission playwrights to create new additions to the canon of plays available to high school performers. The playwrights’ only guidelines are that the plays should be approximately 30 minutes long, have a cast size of at least 12, and reflect Keen Company’s mission of producing sincere plays that are generous in spirit and provoke identification.

Keen Company casts teenage actors from New York City and the surrounding area for the World Premiere productions Off Broadway on Theatre Row, giving students the opportunity to work with professional directors and designers. Playscripts, Inc. then publishes the plays and makes them available to other theater groups interested in licensing the plays for future production.

Keen Teens was conceived by Keen Company (Artistic Director Carl Forsman, Executive Director Wayne Kelton) and Playscripts, Inc.

New large-cast short plays that premiered in 2011:

• The Boring-est Poem in the World by Greg Kotis
• Virtual Congress by Michael Lew
• The Flip Side by Jenny Schwartz

The Plays

• Aliens vs. Cheerleaders by Qui Nguyen (2010)
• The Final Rose by Bekah Brunstetter (2010)
• The Victorian by Marcus Gardley (2010)
• Firebirds by Liz Flahive (2009)
• The Ghost of Enoch Charlton by Cheri Magid (2009)
• The Southridge High School Forensics Team Presents Assorted Tales of Robin Hood by Jason Grote (2009)
• Freak by Naomi Iizuka and Ryan Pavelchik (2008)
• Nowhere in America by Bathsheba Doran (2008)
• Things Fall by Barton Bishop (2008)
• To Know Know Know Me by Courtney Baron (2008)
• Circumvention by Anton Dudley (2007)
• Conspicuous by Winter Miller (2007)

News

• Building the school canon: Playscripts and Keen team up to commission and road-test new plays (Dramatics magazine)
• Blake Lawrence Talks About Keen Teens' (the nytheatre i)