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The play survey Dramatics magazine October 2002 |
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| Shakespeare's sweetest comedy and a vintage musical about an Elvis-like pop singer led the International Thespian Society's annual survey of the most-produced titles in American high schools during the 2001-02 school year. The Thespian Society has compiled the list every year since 1937 by polling its member schools to find out what shows they're producing. About a third of the Society's 3,309 affiliated schools responded to the 2001-02 survey. A Midsummer Night's Dream has been ranked first in the play survey for the past five straight years, a record surpassed only by You Can't Take It with You, which was second this year and had a run of seven consecutive firsts in the 1970s and early '80s. The Kaufman and Hart comedy is the only title that has been listed among the most-produced plays every year since the survey began. This year's top musical, Bye Bye Birdie, was first ranked in the Thespian play survey in 1963, three years after its Broadway run. The top three plays in the one-acts list were all originally published in this magazine. The number one short play, Stephen Gregg's This Is a Test, has placed first thirteen times in the fifteen years since it appeared here. The survey results are presented here with separate listings for musicals, full-length straight plays, and short plays. If the full-length lists were combined (as they have been in past years), the top ten would be A Midsummer Night's Dream, You Can't Take It with You, Bye Bye Birdie, The Crucible, Fiddler on the Roof, Rumors, Anything Goes, Once Upon a Mattress, The Sound of Music, and Godspell. The top ten full-length plays 1. A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare 2. You Can't Take It with You, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 3. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller 4. Rumors, by Neil Simon 5. Arsenic and Old Lace, by Joseph Kesselring 6. Our Town, by Thornton Wilder 7. The Man Who Came to Dinner, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart 8. (tie) The Curious Savage, by John Patrick The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare The top ten musicals 1. Bye Bye Birdie, by Charles Strouse, Michael Stewart, and Lee Adams 2. Fiddler on the Roof, by Sheldon Harnick, Joseph Stein, and Jerry Bock 3. Anything Goes, by Cole Porter, P. G. Wodehouse, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse 4. (tie) Once Upon a Mattress, by Mary Rodgers, Marshall Barer, Dean Fuller, and Jay Thompson The Sound of Music, by Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Howard Lindsay, and Russel Crouse 6. Godspell, by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak 7. (tie) Grease, by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey Guys and Dolls, by Abe Burrows, Joe Swerling, and Frank Loesser 9. Oklahoma! by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II 10. Footloose, by Dean Pitchford, Walter Bobbie, and Tom Snow The top ten short plays 1. This Is a Test, by Stephen Gregg 2. Rapunzel Uncut, by Mariah Everman 3. Hard Candy, by Jonathan Rand 4. The Actor's Nightmare, by Christopher Durang 5. (tie) Competition Piece, by John Wells Sorry, Wrong Number, by Lucille Fletcher 7. (tie) Cut, by Ed Monk Final Dress Rehearsal, by Jack Frakes I Never Saw Another Butterfly, by Celeste Raspanti The End of Civilization as We Know It, by Mark D. Kaufmann Tabulated by Jhon Marshall More news... |
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