It's June, friends, summer is officially upon is! Which means, at least for the teaching artists among us, it's time to start reading plays in order to plan your season for the 2025/26 school year. If that's you, never fear! I'll be highlighting one of my school age plays each week until September to widen your reading list and give you a bunch of exciting options. These plays range from comedic to horror to comedic to historic to comedic…. Did I mention comedy? I really like jokes.
The first play I'm going to highlight is my most recently published play for school aged actors: The Hardy Girls. The Hardy Girls was commissioned by Stage Partners, and is published with them. Here are four reasons you should grab a copy and peruse for yourself:
Looking for a play with a large or medium sized cast?
Not sure how many actors to plan for? The Hardy Girls has as many as 20 parts and as few as 10, with a sweet spot right around 15.
Looking for a play with plenty of parts for young ladies?
The Hardy Girls has a bounty of characters for the talented young ladies in your program to embody. Of the 20 characters, 6 use she/her pronouns, and 14 put the flex in flexible and can use she/her, he/his, or they/them.
Looking for a play for actors to hone their comedic chops?
Like I mentioned before, I like my jokes. And there are jokes aplenty in The Hardy Girls, which drops a fully modern teen in the middle of Bayport, a town trapped in a time, where soda is still pop and to show excitement someone may just unironically yell out, “Golly jee!”
Looking for a full-length that will keep an audience on the edge of their seat through final curtain?
The Hardy Girls runs between 100 to 120 minutes, and follows the teen detective duo Fran and Juno Hardy through a crime spree, a falsely imprisoned friend, awkward flirting, and yes, mortal danger.
Need more to entice you? Here's the synopsis for this comedic who-done-it mystery:
When Juno Hardy is sent to live in the small town of Bayport with her cousin Fran, she is perplexed to find all its eccentric residents are holding onto the bygone era when her grandpa and his brother were teen detectives. But it’s not all wholesome picnics – and when a friend is wrongfully accused of a string of robberies, sarcastic Juno and her upbeat, earnest cousin must work together to solve the crime and clear her name. Grab your magnifying glass and follow the twists and turns of this delightfully cheeky, flexible play inspired by the first Hardy Boys mystery: The Tower Treasure.
You'll find The Hardy Girls with Stage Partners, where you can read the entire script for free! Add it to your summer reading, and think about adding this fun new take on teen detectives to your season line-up!
And be sure to check back next week for your next recommendation! Happy Wednesday!