i need good one act plays for my interhouse skit competition?

Question

Suggest a really good short play, with a little comedy, more of giving a message, that will help me to win my prize

Answer 1

Dependeing on the length required, I have always been partial to a play called "The Valiant." Written in the late twenties by Robert Middlemass and Halworthy Hall, it is a true melodrama (not a soap opera!), about a young man snetenced to be hung for a murder he has freely confessed to, and he receives a visit from a young woman who thinks he is her brother. She will recognize him by quoting Shakespeare she tells the warden.

If it is done honestly and with true feeling for the situation and characters (read underplayed) it works beautifully. about 45 minutes. Hope that's not too long.

Answer 2

Of couple of suggestions I have seen performed at One-Act comeptitions or wished I could have done at competitions:

"Of Winners, Losers, and Games" by O.B. Rozell- "A commedia dell’arte flavor adds charm to this drama about life. A young husband and wife play out a tragic scene against a background of fantasy. “Winner” and “Loser,” a Harlequin-Columbine team, watch to see who will get to celebrate with the young couple...will they be winners in the game of life, or losers? A popular contest piece"

"Asylum" by Jerome McDonough- "A company of players takes the audience through a kaleidoscope in which one episode dissolves into another like an absurd dream. Each episode lets you see some aspect of yourself as a perceptive artist sees you, and the view is not always pleasant. What's the "asylum"?—Is it the world of "normal" people?—or the rest of us?" (Side Note- I performed this for competition and we won many awards for it!)

"Dearly Departed" by Jessie Jones & David Bartrell- It's actually not a one-act, but you can do it "scenes from" style, and work cuts for it. "In the Baptist backwoods of the Bible Belt, the beleaguered Turpin family proves that living and dying in the South are seldom tidy and always hilarious. Despite their earnest efforts to pull themselves together for their father's funeral, the Turpin's other problems keep overshadowing the solemn occasion: Firstborn Ray-Bud drinks himself silly as the funeral bills mount; Junior, the younger son, is juggling financial ruin, a pack of no-neck monster kids, and a wife who suspects him of infidelity in the family car; their spinster sister, Delightful, copes with death as she does life, by devouring junk food; and all the neighbors add more than two cents. As the situation becomes fraught with mishap, Ray-Bud says to his long-suffering wife, "When I die, don't tell nobody. Just bury me in the backyard and tell everybody I left you." Amidst the chaos, the Turpins turn for comfort to their friends and neighbors, an eccentric community of misfits who just manage to pull together and help each other through their hours of need, and finally, the funeral."

BEST WISHES!!!