play 4M 4F Archives - Off The Wall Plays

PRELUDE TO MACBETH – MODERN SHAKESPEARE PLAYS

This award winning one act play is a prequel to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The story of how Macbeth becomes Thane of Glamis and how he meets Lorna Stewart who becomes his wife – Lady Macbeth. The play is written in blank verse – the style fashionable with playwrights of Shakespeare’s era.

Macbeth’s first wife has just died. Battle weary and devastated by his loss he decides to give up being a soldier. Duncan doesn’t want to lose Macbeth. He offers him the title of Thane of Glamis if he will agree to continue as his general. Macbeth knows he will either have to accept the offer – or flee into exile. Duncan won’t take no for an answer.

Prelude to Macbeth won the 2010 Seahorse Award for best stage play at the Moondance Film Festival in America. At the Wilmslow Guild Drama Festival 2010 it received the Adjudicators Award for the most original piece of theatre.

It was also awarded the trophies for highest directing mark and overall winner at the SCDA Caithness District festival of one act plays in Scotland in 2016.

FURTHER PRODUCTION HISTORY

Artist’s Playground – Quezon, Philippines – 2016
Second round performances Artist’s Playground – Quezon, Philippines
Wauwatosa East High School – Tosa East Players, WI, USA – 2022
Smoky Hill High School, CO, USA – 2022

Read about playwright James Chalmers.

Author: James Chalmers

Genre: Shakespearean tragedy, modern Shakespeare plays

Type: One act play

Length: Forty minutes

Number of actors: Eight, 4M 4F

Ages of the actors: Teenage to elderly

Suitable for: All ages

Set: A simple stage set is suggested – for example free standing flats (1m wide x 2m high) in an arc across the playing area – painted a neutral colour such as grey. Entrances and exits can be between the flats or in front of them. The flats suggest rocks like Stonehenge or castle battlements.

Level of Difficulty: 7/10 – this play is written in the same style as Shakespeare wrote, achieving the right flow of the words is paramount.

Read a Sample of the Script

Cost is $10 for this award winning script

Contact Off The Wall Plays with any queries about Prelude to Macbeth

© August 2014 James Chalmers and Off The Wall Play Publishers

Like this play? Other classic type plays:

The Scepter has departed – play about how modern day Israel was made
Lies You can’t make up – play about JFK

two act drama plays

EARLY LIBERTY – TWO ACT DRAMA PLAYS

“Life is about paying attention to the right things,” but what happens when the people and places you consider safe aren’t? What is “safe” and who spells “Home”?

When Mark Haywood follows the beacon into Lighthouse Cove nothing is what it seems. But if Mark’s world is falling apart—despite increasingly-frantic efforts to keep it together, then the hotel proprietor and his family need a special kind of rescue from each other. Just what will it take for Selma to grow up and for Mark to wake up? Can these dueling opposites save the hotel and find a way to be together? Set in 1985 on the Atlantic shore, Early Liberty explores the limits and boundlessness of love and hope, and the darker side of what it means to dream.

Early Liberty is a play about false fronts and true love, about crossed wires and yardsticks we never measure up to. This dramatic love story is especially relevant now, especially as regards women’s status, and the parallels between the idealized Reagan Era and the “world as it is today” to reveal that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Early Liberty was produced at Texas State University (Lab Theatre) January 31-February 3, 2013.The play has already been workshopped but the author is open to minor changes, authorized in writing. Read more about playwright Rita Anderson

Rita and Early Liberty have both been recently featured as the cover story in Baring Her Soul for a living – Hill Country View.

Author: Rita Anderson

Genre: Drama, two-act drama

Type: Full length drama plays

Number of Actors: 4M, 4F

Ages of the actors: All adult, 20s-60s.

Set: An out-of-date hotel in Norfolk with a nautical theme. First day of Spring.

Suitable for: All ages

Level of Difficulty: 7/10 – much of the play is carried by a conversation between two people.