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The play survey
Dramatics magazine
October 2004 |
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The top plays in the International Thespian Society's annual survey look familiar. The survey, compiled by the Thespian Society every year since 1937, polls member schools to find out what shows they're producing. Nearly seven hundred affiliated schools responded to the 2003-04 survey.
On the full-length play list, seven of the eleven plays (there was a tie for tenth place) appeared on last year's survey. The venerable You Can't Take It With You was the most-produced play. The Kaufman and Hart comedy has made the list every year since 1939, and it holds the record for consecutive years in first place with seven years in the 1970s and 80s. Shakespeare favorite A Midsummer Night's Dream earned second place, as it did last year. Interesting Shakespeare addition: that Scottish play, appearing on the list for the first time ever.
Strouse, Stewart, and Adams's Bye Bye Birdie returns to first place on the most-produced musicals list, after being unseated for a year by the introduction of the school edition of Les Misérables. Worth noting: newcomer Honk! (a favorite at the Thespian Festival a few years ago) tied for the number seven position among musicals.
Stephen Gregg's This Is a Test leads the one-act play tally again this year. Gregg's play has now placed first fifteen times in the seventeen years since it first appeared in Dramatics magazine.
The top ten full-length plays
1. You Can't Take It With You, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart
2. A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare
3. Rumors, by Neil Simon
4. The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
5. Our Town, by Thornton Wilder
6. Arsenic and Old Lace, by Joseph Kesselring
7. Noises Off, by Michael Frayn
8. Fools, by Neil Simon
9. Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare
10 (tie). The Miracle Worker, by William Gibson
10 (tie). Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
The top ten musicals
1. Bye Bye Birdie, by Charles Strouse, Michael Stewart, and Lee Adams
2. Cinderella, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
3. Guys and Dolls, by Abe Burrows, Jo Swerling, and Frank Loesser
4 (tie). Grease, by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey
4 (tie). Into the Woods, by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim
4 (tie). You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, by Clark Gesner
7 (tie). Les Misérables (school edition), by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Herbert Kretzmer
7 (tie). Oklahoma!, by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
9 (tie). Honk!, by Anthony Drewe and George Stiles
9 (tie). Little Shop of Horrors, by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken
The top ten short plays
1. This Is a Test, by Stephen Gregg
2 (tie). Check Please, by Jonathan Rand
2 (tie). Hard Candy, by Jonathan Rand
4. The Actor's Nightmare, by Christopher Durang
5 (tie). Bang Bang You're Dead, by William Mastrosimone
5 (tie). S.P.A.R., by Stephen Gregg
7. The Fifteen Minute Hamlet, by Tom Stoppard
8. Cut, by Ed Monk
9. Sorry, Wrong Number, by Lucille Fletcher
10 (tie). Governing Alice, by C. Denby Swanson
10 (tie). Present Tense, by John McNamara
10 (tie). Sure Thing, by David Ives
10 (tie). The Ugly Duckling, A.A. Milne
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