Wednesday, October 27, 2021
The 10 Most-Produced High School Plays and Musicals of 2020–2021
Playbill: The Educational Theatre Association has unveiled its list of the most produced plays, musicals, and short plays in U.S. high schools during the 2020–2021 school year, the result of a survey that has been conducted annually since 1938.
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I happily shared these statistics with my fellow theater lovers and we were thoroughly entertained. Not only because it is so relatable to so many of us, but also because some of them are so random! I am sure it is because of some rights and laws, but The Theory of Relativity? Bright Star? Unheard to me! It is important to note that because these high schools are doing similar shows, student crews are facing the same challenges so when they show their portfolios when interviewing for conservatories. This even applied to me, when I applied I used images of The Addams Family Musical, The Odd Couple, and Arsenic and Old Lace, and when chatting with my fellow college freshman I found that a surprising amount of us had also done these shows! This makes theatre admissions even more competitive, and it honestly was not something that even crossed my mind when applying.
While this article was quite literally just a list of the most common high school plays and musicals in the United States, I found it was incredibly eye opening. I truly had no idea how common many of the high school musicals and plays I preformed in and designed where across the United States. For the full-length musicals I vividly remember my first performance was in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” which took 4th place on the list. The first production I costume designed was “Little Woman” which took 5th place. I also preformed in and designed a production of “Into the Woods” Which took 9th place. For the Plays I also helped design and preformed in “Almost, Maine” which took 2nd place. For whatever reason “Almost Maine” took me most by surprise as I really didn’t expect it to be one of the most popular High School plays. When I first heard my school was doing “Almost Maine” I had legitimately never heard of the play so I am very surprised it was ranked at 2nd place. Looking back though, I can understand why “Almost Maine” is so popular. It has such a vestal storyline with tons of characters making it perfect for a high school educational setting.
I look forward to this article every year. It is so fun to see what everyone is doing and usually, the show my high school is doing or did last year is on the list. I think it is interesting that some shows on this list feel like they are overdone whereas others are shows that I’ve never even heard of. My high school did Bright Star as my final show so it was heartwarming to see it on this list. I have done five of the shows on this list which I think is a nice balance of having the classic experience and having a unique one that gives me a chance to learn something new. I think it is incredibly interesting that Clue is the number one play, I personally don’t find this show that good but other people really seem to like it. I think this could be something to do with how many high schools were forced to be on zoom this year due to the pandemic.
Reading this list was so amusing to me, especially as I was able to identify shows my highschool did, like Vintage Hitchcock: A Live Radio Play, Alice in Wonderland, and Puffs, as well as shows I saw in other high schools around my area, such as The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Theory of Relativity, Bright Star, ad Almost, Maine. It also makes me think of why these are the most produced shows, and I can think of 2 reasons. The first is that the amount of producable plays has gone down considerably in the last year, as many schools were barred from live productions and had to do plays with available streaming rights. Another noticeable trends is flexible cast options. For example, Little Shop of Horrors, Into the Woods and Theory of Relativity can be done with a large or small cast. In addition, many of the plays and musicals chosen are shows that much of the cast can be changed in gender and race without breaking the integrty of the show, which could be useful as a highschool who cannot hire actors and must do shows with the student body that auditions.
I was surprised that some of these shows I have never even heard of. Number three on the list of musicals, the Theory of Relativity is a show I have never heard of in the context of high school or professional theatre. In addition, I have heard of most of the shows, but only by name, and have no clue about any additional information on the show. I wasn’t even aware that Little Women was made into a musical at all. Some of these I have seen performed by other high schools but have never done myself. The only show that I can say that I was personally in while in high school is Peter and the Starcatcher, which I loved because I was a huge fan of the book series when I was younger. In addition, I have seen Addams Family, but my two personal favorites from the list are Puffs and She Kills Monsters. Both of these shows I saw at the PA Thespian Conference and this article really reminded me of all the great times I had doing and see shows in a high school setting.
I did high school theater from 2015-2018, and I expected to at least have done one of the shows on the list, but surprisingly at my high school we never did any of these shows. I haven’t kept up with their current season but I was surprised that the shows change that much from year to year. Shows like The Little Mermaid and A Christmas Carol are classics, so those seem like they must be on the list pretty consistently. The “Short Plays” section has a lot of quarantine- and lockdown-themed plays, and shifting to online learning was such a big change that I can see why schools would want to address that in their season. In the future, I doubt these types of shows will continue to be as popular, as many audiences probably will want to move past COVID-19 and not want to be reminded of the time we all spent in quarantine.
This is the first time I have seen this article from Playbill Magazine, however, I felt like most of these shows were pretty predictable. All of the common high school shows in my eyes are on the list. Some of the expected ones in my head are shows like "Almost Maine," "Into the Woods," "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," "Little Shop of Horrors," and "A Midsummer Night’s Dream," as well as many others. What I was surprised by was the Short Plays section. Many of these plays seem to be quarantine or lock down themed plays implying that they are relatively new works. My high school never seems to venture into anything written in recent years. It was always something that had been done over and over again. While finically this makes sense when it comings to getting the rights to perform the show, I wish there was a way for us to have done a few newer shows.
This assortment of shows definitely makes sense for high school. It brings back some memories of shows I adored at that period of time. One key aspect of all these is the large cast size, which is usually desirable with a bunch of students. Many of those shows are very technically challenging though, with the special effects needed for "Addams Family" and the intense puppetry of "Little Shop of Horrors". It makes me really sad that many schools still can't put on productions as these because of COVID, especially because this was one of my favorite parts of high school, and an aspect that created balance in my life with all the stress of academics. Even now, production is my favorite part of school. I'm happy to see there's a relief fund as a part of ITS, especially as budget cuts to the arts are exacerbated in this hard time.
I can confirm that my own high school did “Radium Girls,” and my sister’s high school did “Little Women” maybe three weeks ago. I did not even know that was a musical until recently. The first week of April when COVID started was supposed to be the opening of “Little Shop of Horrors” at my high school, and the kids were devastated when they had to cancel it. My school’s tech director thinks that the company she rented the Audrey puppets from went out of business during the pandemic, and now she has a massive crate with a plant in it sitting in the band hallway. When I was in high school, my junior year play was “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which I should add that we did during Halloween weekend. So that was a little weird. I do wonder how these shows were even done during a pandemic. I know CMU had a ton of issues getting the rights to record or stream our shows online, so how were high schools able to do it?
I always wondered what were the most produced high school plays and musicals. I mean, during my time in high school I remember scrolling through Instagram and seeing a few of my camp friends (yes, I went to theatre camp) oftentimes post a picture of the same show I was working/had worked on. Something that was, at least for me, very entertaining to watch. Looking at this list, I realize two things: my school produced interesting plays yet stuck to the conventional musicals. I guess there’s something to be said about “easily” produced musicals.; and I think this has to do with both the technical and artistic needs of each production.
On another note, it is fascinating to see “Godspell” on the list. After all, “Godspell” was a project started here at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama. I mean, we all know the famous story of professor Susan Tsu having worked with a total of 150 dollars in designing and producing the costumes.
I am both surprised and not surprised to see a lot of these productions on the list. I've done a few of these in high school (and some in college before I came here) but the placement on the list of some of these is very interesting. I was the foley artist in a production of Our Town that got cancelled when covid hit, and one of the things that we talked about at the start of production was how often high schools did the show because you can do it with practically no budget, due to the meta-theatrical nature of the show. Subject wise, I think it's a bad show for high schoolers, because how in the world do you hold your attention on a dry show like Our Town (to be clear, I love the show).
Additionally, Almost, Maine is the 2nd most produced high school play? Seriously? I did it in high school as well, but I will never understand how that show makes it into so many high school theaters. Don't get me wrong, I also love this show, but it has several scenes that high schoolers look at and just go "huh?" but what do I know, if it does that well.
High school theatre is such a culture and I feel like there is a whole lot of research that could be done surrounding it. Though this is just a ranked list of how many times each show was produced, it gives us insights about what high school theatres are doing in the middle of the pandemic, as well as what high schools are finding appropriate to do. I am both surprised and not that the The Theory of Relativity is on the list so high, since it is a smaller show that may have been optioned for streaming. I know I almost did it in my undergrad solely because I stumbled upon it while reading through the alphabetical list of shows MTI offered. Something that sticks out to me in this list is the notable lacking of BIPOC works or productions. I know that the systemic problems in the theatre industry won't go away overnight, but I think that change has to start from the bottom if we are going to realize it.
While I was in high school, of the things on this list, we put on: Little Shop of Horrors, Into the Woods, and Almost Maine. Though I know that in a few of the years prior they had produced The 25gh Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and Godspell. I think it’s kind of funny that I’ve never heard of half of the popular plays and a few of the popular musicals. Though to be fair, I’m really not versed in theatre at all. I was fairly lucky to go to a school that liked trying to push the boundaries of what kinds of musicals we could put on, like doing American Idiot, but the selections for plays were always kind of a miss. I think the worst one we did while I was there was ‘Flowers for Algernon,’ since it was essentially an able-bodied actor pretending too have a disability for an hour and a half.
I didn’t even know there’s a counter keeping track of productions in high schools! I found the list very interesting because there are a few musicals that my high school had done, and I remember we were supposed to do the Addams Family in 2020, which was cancelled due to the pandemic. Reading this article reminded me a lot of my time working in productions in middle and high school. My school always did musicals but I’m surprised we’ve only done two that are on the list — Little Shop of Horrors and the Addams Family. I think there were a lot of musicals that we wanted to do but couldn’t get the right (e.g. Mamma Mia), which was truly a shame. The article also reminds me of how many different plays and musicals there are, and that I still have much to learn.
I was intrigued to see what would be on this list based off of my experience with high school theatre and my experiences with being a substitute teacher for a high school theatre. As far as the list goes, the only show my school did back in the day was A Christmas Carol. I am a little surprised at how dark some of the plays are that are being down so frequently with young actors/children but not surprised to see that there aren’t many comedies. Comedies take another level of directions and acting capabilities. The short plays list was a blast from the past, as I have seen other high schools do several of these productions. I also think that it is great that the Educational Theatre Foundation has provided a relief fund specifically for high school theaters. I wonder how strict their qualifications are and how much they have advertised to high schools that these funds have been made available.
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