{"id":5812,"date":"2018-06-28T16:52:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T16:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/performerstuff.com\/mgs\/?p=5812"},"modified":"2020-04-23T19:46:43","modified_gmt":"2020-04-23T19:46:43","slug":"27-more-plays-all-high-school-seniors-should-read-before-they-graduate-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/performerstuff.com\/mgs\/27-more-plays-all-high-school-seniors-should-read-before-they-graduate-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"27 MORE Plays All High School Seniors Should Read (Before They Graduate) Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

27 MORE Plays All High School Seniors Should Read (Before They Graduate) Part 3<\/h3>\n \"\"<\/a><\/span>

Written by\u00a0Ashleigh Gardner<\/p>\n

June 26, 2018<\/p>\n<\/font>

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You know what\u2019s 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\u2019ll now get the chance to audition for some of the greatest plays ever written. You\u2019ll have the opportunity to audition for theatres to earn the role of Freddy in\u00a0Pygmalion<\/i>, Nick in\u00a0Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?<\/i>, or Cory in\u00a0Fences.\u00a0<\/i>Ophelia from\u00a0Hamlet<\/i>, Irina from\u00a0Three Sisters,\u00a0<\/i>or Lysistrata from \u2014 well \u2014\u00a0Lysistrata.<\/i><\/p>\n

To have a better chance at being cast in any of those amazing plays, you should\u00a0read\u00a0<\/i>them first.\u00a0We’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<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span> and Part 2 here<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

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1. Electra<\/em> by Sophocles<\/h4>\n
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\u201cThis <\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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2. Antigone<\/em> by Sophocles<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Prestwick House<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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3, 4, and 5. The Oresteia<\/i> cycle (3 plays) by Aeschylus<\/h4>\n
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The <\/span>Oresteia <\/span><\/i>is a cycle of three plays by Aeschylus that revolves around the ruler Agamemnon. \u201c<\/span>In <\/span>Agamemnon<\/span><\/i>, 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;<\/span> The Libation Bearers<\/span><\/i> deals with the aftermath of Clytemnestra’s regicide, as her son Orestes sets out to avenge his father’s death; and in <\/span>The Eumenides<\/span><\/i>, 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, <\/span>The Oresteia<\/span><\/i> is a compelling tragedy of the tensions between our obligations to our families and the laws that bind us together as a society. \u201d – <\/span>Penguin<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play cycle <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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6. Medea<\/i> by Euripides<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>Medea<\/span><\/i> 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.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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7. The Trojan Women<\/i> by Euripides<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>The Trojan Women<\/span><\/i> 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.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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8. The Bacchae<\/i> by Euripides<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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9. The Tempest <\/i>by William Shakespeare<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Signet Classics<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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10. The Taming of the Shrew <\/i>by William Shakespeare<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Signet Classics<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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11. As You Like It <\/i>by William Shakespeare<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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12. King Lear <\/i>by William Shakespeare<\/h4>\n
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\u201cKing Lear <\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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13. The Mandrake<\/i> by Nicolo Machiavelli<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Dramatists Play Service<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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14. The Playboy of the Western World<\/i> by J.M. Synge<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>A stranger, Christy Mahon, arrives in a village bar in the West of Ireland claiming to have killed his father. The locals are impressed \u2013 some can even directly relate to the deed \u2013 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.\u201d – <\/span>Nick Hern Books<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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15. Ubu Roi <\/i>by Alfred Jarry<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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16. The School for Scandal<\/i> by Richard Brinsley Sheridan<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>The School for Scandal <\/span><\/i>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 \u2014 one of the most famous in all of theater.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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17. Uncle Vanya<\/i> by Anton Chekhov<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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 \u2014 weakness and inability to communicate \u2014 the failures that lead them to lives of frustration and despair.\u201d – <\/span>Dover<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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18. The Birthday Party<\/i> by Harold Pinter<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Samuel French<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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19. The Iceman Cometh<\/i> by Eugene O\u2019Neill<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>The Iceman Cometh<\/span><\/i> 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.\u201d – S<\/span>amuel French<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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20. The Killer<\/i> by Eugene Ionesco<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>A study of pure evil. Berenger, a conscientious citizen, finds himself in a radiantly beautiful city marred only by the presence of a killer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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21. A Free Man of Color<\/i> by John Guare<\/h4>\n
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\u201cBefore law an<\/span>d 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.\u201d – <\/span>Dramatists Play Service<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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22. Topdog\/Underdog<\/i> by Suzan Lori-Parks<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Dramatists Play Service<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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23. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead<\/i> by Tom Stoppard<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, <\/span>Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead<\/span><\/i> 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.\u201d – <\/span>Samuel French<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play here<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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24. Equus<\/i> by Peter Shaffer<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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\u2019s 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.\u201d – <\/span>Samuel French<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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25. Glengarry Glen Ross<\/i> by David Mamet<\/h4>\n
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\u201cA <\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Samuel French <\/span><\/i>(Read here<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span> about the all-female cast of this play.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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26. The Vagina Monologues<\/i> by Eve Ensler<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>The Vagina Monologues<\/span><\/i> 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 \u2018liked to look at it.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/b><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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27. The Clean House <\/i>by Sarah Ruhl<\/h4>\n
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\u201c<\/span>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.\u201d – <\/span>Samuel French<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Get the play <\/span>here<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n
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Interested in reading more plays? Check out our other features below!<\/h3>\n