PLAYS, The Drama Magazine for Young People is published seven times year. A year subscription costs $39.00, which comes out to be $5.57 an issue. Each issue contains eight to ten plays. Plays for lower, middle and upper grades are included with each issue. All the plays are royalty free.
Sometimes the plays are short skits or spoofs. The December issues have holiday themed plays. Other issues may have patriotic plays, folk tales, fairy tales, myths, melodramas, puppet plays, or plays based on historical events. Plays for upper grades are often dramatized classic stories from authors like Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Teachers will love the easy to use format. Each play has a list of characters, suggestions for costumes, and explains the time period of the story. But other people besides teachers and classroom students can benefit from this magazine. Youth group leaders, homeschoolers, scout leaders, or even people with large families will find the plays fun, age appropriate and easy to perform.
Plays are great for boosting reading skills. The children try to read the words as spoken language. That’s good reading, the kind of reading literacy teachers call “fluent reading”. Plays are good for bringing out shy children, and for getting children to work together. Historical plays are great for bringing history to life. And sometimes kids may decide to read an entire work after performing a one act play based on the work. Plays can be a sneaky way for introducing great literature. Being on stage can be a great confidence booster. And acting in or observing plays can be a wonderful way to spark imaginations.
My own nieces used to put on holiday plays every Christmas. They wrote, directed, and acted out Christmas themed plays for the enjoyment of their grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles. Two of them went on to act in many high school and college productions. Their plays often were the best part of Christmas. Sometimes the audience gets just as much out of plays as the performers.
Also See:
Boys Life Magazine
The Importance of Being Ernest