Our most popular plays for amateur performance, based on the number of licences issued in 2024.
The 40 titles listed below were our most popular titles licensed for performance by amateur groups worldwide.
Read more about the Top Ten most performed plays of 2024, over on our Blog>>
Brainstorm: The Original Playscript
And a Blueprint for Creating Your Own Production
A unique theatrical investigation into how teenagers' brains work, and why they’re designed by evolution to be the way they are.
Animal Farm (stage version)
By George Orwell Adapted by Ian Wooldridge6-14 actorsA powerful and straightforward dramatisation of Orwell's enduring parable on the perils of totalitarianism.
Chaos
By Laura Lomasflexible, any size, any genderA symphony of characters searching for meaning in a complicated and unstable world. Part of the 2019 National Theatre Connections Festival.
The IT
Flexible (5 or more, no maximum, any gender)A darkly comic state-of-the-nation play exploring adolescent mental health and the rage within. Winner of the Best Play for Young Audiences Award at the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards 2023.
The Weir
1f 4mThe spellbinding, beautifully observed hit from the master of suspenseful realism.
Earthquakes in London
7f 10m, doubling, large cast possibleAn epic rollercoaster of a play travelling from 1968 to 2525 and back again, driven by an all-pervasive fear of the future and a guilty pleasure in the excesses of the present.
Di and Viv and Rose
3fA warm and funny play about female friendship, crackling with wit and poignant observation.
The Last of the Pelican Daughters
5-7f 3mA comedy about four sisters trying to come to terms with their mother's death.
Arabian Nights (RSC stage version)
4f 5m doubling (large cast possible)A simple and delightfully inventive re-telling of the stories from the Arabian Nights.
Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons
By Sam Steiner1f 1mA play about what we say and how we say it; about the things we can only hear in the silence; about dead cats, activism, eye contact and lemons, lemons, lemons, lemons, lemons.
Ladies Down Under
4f 2m (doubling, or up to 9m)The funny, heart-warming sequel to the enormously successful Ladies' Day, following the lasses from Hull on their adventures down under.
After Life
By Jack Thorne Original author Hirokazu Kore-eda5-6f 7-8mA surreal and powerfully human look at the way we view our lives, and a haunting meditation on what it is to live – and to die.
The Sweet Science of Bruising
6f 4m doubling (up to 7f 8m)An epic tale of passion, politics and pugilism in the world of 19th-century women’s boxing.
A Christmas Carol – A Ghost Story (stage version)
By Charles Dickens Adapted by Mark Gatiss50+ parts (original cast 5f 8m doubling)A spine-tingling stage adaptation that is faithful to the heart and spirit of Charles Dickens' much-loved festive ghost story – with an emphasis on the ghostly.
As We Face the Sun
Flexible cast, 4-50 performers, any genderA stark and tender story about growing up, the pleasures of friendship, why we hold onto things and how we might start to let go. In the Nick Hern Books Multiplay Drama series.
Be My Baby
6fA poignant drama about attitudes to teenage pregnancy in 1960s Britain.
Treasure Island (Le Navet Bete stage version)
4m doubling (or a mixed cast playing 26 characters)A rip-roaring, swashbuckling, family-friendly retelling of a classic story.
Pressure
By David Haig1f 12mAn intense real-life thriller centred around the most important weather forecast in the history of warfare.
Lilies on the Land
4f doubling (large cast possible)A revealing, funny and wonderfully moving portrait of four women who sign up to join the Women's Land Army during World War II.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (stage version)
By Mary Shelley and Rona Munro3-6f 4-9m plus 1f/mA brilliant adaptation of Mary Shelley's Gothic masterpiece that places the writer herself amongst the action as she wrestles with her creation and with the stark realities facing revolutionary young women, then and now.
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Amateur Productions
On Now & Coming SoonThe Wardrobe EnsembleElla HicksonDario Fo and Franca Rame, Adapted by Tom BasdenStef Smith, Original author Henrik IbsenLydia MarchantKate MosseBill Bryson, Adapted by Tim WhitnallFin KennedyAmanda WhittingtonAmanda Whittington