You know what’s great about being a high school senior? Graduating obviously! But another great thing about being on the cusp of your transition from high school to college (or the professional acting world) is that you’ll now get the chance to audition for some of the greatest plays ever written. You’ll have the opportunity to audition for theatres to earn the role of Freddy in Pygmalion, Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, or Cory in Fences. Ophelia from Hamlet, Irina from Three Sisters, or Lysistrata from — well — Lysistrata.

To have a better chance at being cast in any of those amazing plays, you should read them first. We’ve also got two more lists of plays every high school senior should read. What are you waiting for? Get on it! Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

1. Electra by Sophocles

“This masterpiece of drama concerns the revenge Electra takes on her mother for the murder of her father. One of the best-known heroines of all drama and a towering figure of Greek tragedy.” – Dover

Get the play here.

2. Antigone by Sophocles

“The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone is an unconventional heroine who pits her beliefs against the King of Thebes in a bloody test of wills that leaves few unharmed. Emotions fly as she challenges the king for the right to bury her own brother.” – Prestwick House

Get the play here.

3, 4, and 5. The Oresteia cycle (3 plays) by Aeschylus

The Oresteia is a cycle of three plays by Aeschylus that revolves around the ruler Agamemnon. “In Agamemnon, a king’s decision to sacrifice his daughter and turn the tide of war inflicts lasting damage on his family, culminating in a terrible act of retribution; The Libation Bearers deals with the aftermath of Clytemnestra’s regicide, as her son Orestes sets out to avenge his father’s death; and in The Eumenides, Orestes is tormented by supernatural powers that can never be appeased. Forming an elegant and subtle discourse on the emergence of Athenian democracy out of a period of chaos and destruction, The Oresteia is a compelling tragedy of the tensions between our obligations to our families and the laws that bind us together as a society. ” – Penguin

Get the play cycle here.

6. Medea by Euripides

“Medea centers on the myth of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, who has won the dragon-guarded treasure of the Golden Fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea. Having married Medea and fathered her two children, Jason abandons her for a more favorable match, never suspecting the terrible revenge she will take.” – Dover

Get the play here.

7. The Trojan Women by Euripides

“The Trojan Women is one of Euripides’ anti-war plays, set in Troy just after it has been captured by the Greeks in a bitter, ten-year war…It relies on passages of lyric lamentation in the form of songs by Hecuba and other women who face cruel servitude in Greece. It is a powerful tragedy that emphasizes the sufferings of the innocent victims of war.” – Dover

Get the play here.

8. The Bacchae by Euripides

“When Dionysus (in disguise) attempts to spread his cult among the people (especially the women) of Thebes, their king, Pentheus, imprisons Dionysus and tries to suppress his cult. The king’s misguided attempt to thwart the will of a god leads to catastrophe.” – Dover

Get the play here.

9. The Tempest by William Shakespeare

“Prospero, sorcerer and rightful Duke of Milan, along with his daughter Miranda, has lived on an island for many years since his position was usurped by his brother Antonio. Then, as Antonio’s ship passes near the island one day, Prospero conjures up a terrible storm.” – Signet Classics

Get the play here.

10. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

“The tumultuous relationship of Petruchio and the headstrong Katherina, this popular comedy goes beyond courtship to explore what happens after a determined man marries a woman who refuses to be tamed.” – Signet Classics

Get the play here.

11. As You Like It by William Shakespeare

“Unjustly deposed by his younger brother, the rightful duke retreats to the Forest of Arden and forms a utopia with his loyal followers while his daughter remains at court as a companion to her cousin. When forbidden romance enters their lives, the girls assume disguises and flee to the forest, where they encounter a magical world of friendly outlaws and wise fools.” – Dover

Get the play here.

12. King Lear by William Shakespeare

“King Lear depicts the gradual descent into madness of the title character after he disposes of his kingdom by giving bequests to two of his three daughters egged on by their continual flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all.” – Dover

Get the play here.

13. The Mandrake by Nicolo Machiavelli

“Set in sixteenth-century Florence, the play blends songs and robust action in detailing the hilarious lengths to which the smitten Callimaco goes in winning the favors of Lucrezia, the beautiful young wife of the rich and aged lawyer, Nicia. Enlisting the aid of the artful trickster Ligurio, Callimaco is passed off as a doctor who has devised a magic potion which, he promises Nicia, will make the heretofore childless Lucrezia conceive. But the catch is that the first man who sleeps with her after she takes the potion will die.” – Dramatists Play Service

Get the play here.

14. The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge

“A stranger, Christy Mahon, arrives in a village bar in the West of Ireland claiming to have killed his father. The locals are impressed – some can even directly relate to the deed – and Christy is lauded as a folk hero. He can’t believe his luck, and confidently pursues the affections of the barmaid Pegeen, until the arrival of his not-so-dead father takes the winds out of Christy’s sails.” – Nick Hern Books

Get the play here.

15. Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry

“One of the most excessive political caricatures, Ubu Roi ranks with the most original and powerful burlesques of all time. The character Ubu Roi was actually based on a schoolteacher who taught Jarry and was fat, mediocre, and hated no more than Jarry hated the mediocrity he saw which was all lumped together in the nineteenth-century bourgeois view of art. The play, which takes place in Poland or nowhere, deals with the cruelty of despots and the stupidity of the human condition.”

Get the play here.

16. The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

“The School for Scandal is a comedy with two plots, one involving Sir Oliver Surface’s attempts to discover the worthier of his two nephews, and the other unleashing Lady Sneerwell’s strategies to ensnare both nephews and the hapless Lady Teazle in her designs. Both plots converge brilliantly in the screen scene — one of the most famous in all of theater.” – Dover

Get the play here.

17. Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov

“Set on an estate in nineteenth-century Russia, this deeply emotional tale of misplaced idealism and unrequited love concerns the complex interrelationships between a retired professor, his second wife, and his brother-in-law and daughter from a previous marriage. In deceptively mundane dialogue, the characters reveal their private tragedies — weakness and inability to communicate — the failures that lead them to lives of frustration and despair.” – Dover

Get the play here.

18. The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter

“In a small house at a coastal resort lives a man, his mentally wayward wife, and their boarder, who has been with them for a year. He is a strange chap, unkempt and in-flight from we know not what. Enter an even stranger, sleek Jewish man and his musclebound Irish henchman. The mentally immature wife accommodates them with a room, and then decides that it is time for the boarder to have a birthday. At the party she arranges, the new guests play cruel games with the boarder, break his glasses, make a buffoon of him, and push him over the psychotic precipice.” – Samuel French

Get the play here.

19. The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill

“The Iceman Cometh focuses on a group of alcoholics and misfits who endlessly discuss but never act on their dreams, and Hickey, the traveling salesman determined to strip them of their pipe dreams.” – Samuel French

Get the play here.

20. The Killer by Eugene Ionesco

“A study of pure evil. Berenger, a conscientious citizen, finds himself in a radiantly beautiful city marred only by the presence of a killer.”

Get the play here.

21. A Free Man of Color by John Guare

“Before law and order took hold, New Orleans was boisterous; before class, racial and political lines were drawn, it was a parade of beautiful women and good-looking men, flowing wine, and pleasure for the taking. At the center of this Dionysian world is Jacques Cornet, who commands the men, seduces the women, preens like a peacock, and cuts a wide swath through the city and the province. But, it is 1801 and the map of New Orleans is about to be redrawn. The Louisiana Purchase will bring American rule to New Orleans, challenging the chaotic, colorful world of Jacques Cornet and all that he represents.” – Dramatists Play Service

Get the play here.

22. Topdog/Underdog by Suzan Lori-Parks

“A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori Parks’ latest riff on the way we are defined by history. The play tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, foretelling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future.” – Dramatists Play Service

Get the play here.

23. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

“Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Tom Stoppard’s best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end.” – Samuel French

Get the play here.

24. Equus by Peter Shaffer

“Dr. Martin Dysart, a psychiatrist, is confronted with Alan Strang, a boy who has blinded six horses in a violent fit of passion. This very passion is as foreign to Dysart as the act itself. To the boy’s parents, it is a hideous mystery; Alan has always adored horses. To Dysart, it is a psychological puzzle that leads both doctor and patient to a complex and disturbingly dramatic confrontation.” – Samuel French

Get the play here.

25. Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

“A small-time, cutthroat real estate salesmen trying to grind out a living by pushing plots of land on reluctant buyers, in a never-ending scramble for their share of the American dream.” – Samuel French (Read here about the all-female cast of this play.)

Get the play here.

26. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler

“The Vagina Monologues introduces a wildly divergent gathering of female voices, including a six-year-old girl, a septuagenarian New Yorker, a vagina workshop participant, a woman who witnesses the birth of her granddaughter, a Bosnian survivor of rape, and a feminist happy to have found a man who ‘liked to look at it.’”

Get the play here.

27. The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl

“The play takes place in what the author describes as ‘metaphysical Connecticut,’ mostly in the home of a married couple who are both doctors. They have hired a housekeeper named Matilde, an aspiring comedian from Brazil who’s more interested in coming up with the perfect joke than in house-cleaning. Lane, the lady of the house, has an eccentric sister named Virginia who’s just nuts about house-cleaning. She and Matilde become fast friends, and Virginia takes over the cleaning while Matilde works on her jokes. Trouble comes when Lane’s husband Charles reveals that he has found his soul mate, or ‘bashert’ in a cancer patient named Anna, on whom he has operated.” – Samuel French

Get the play here.

Interested in reading more plays? Check out our other features below!

• 25 Plays All High School Seniors Should Read (Before They Graduate)
• 10 Contemporary Native American Playwrights You Should Know
• 10 Contemporary Playwrights of Color You Should Know
• 10 Asian American Playwrights You Should Know
• 10 Latinx, Hispanic, and Chicano/a Playwrights You Should Know
• 10 Eighteenth-Century Female Playwrights You Should Know
• 10 Nineteenth-Century Female Playwrights You Should Know
• 10 Classic Russian Playwrights You Should Know
• 12 Elizabethan and Jacobean Playwrights You Should Know
• 7 Greek and Roman Playwrights You Should Know
• 13 Classic American Playwrights You Should Know
• Early 20th Century Broadway Composers and Lyricists You Should Know