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We're currently inviting applications to license Nick Hern Books plays for amateur online performance.

As we all navigate these unprecedented times, an online performance is the perfect way to bring your members or students together to keep sharing your passion, experience great new plays by today's most exciting writers, and stay active and connected. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting, ever-changing restrictions, means it can be difficult to plan productions with confidence right now – and so online performances can offer certainty and peace of mind, freeing you up to focus on making fantastic theatre. 

Whether you're looking to share a play you've always been passionate about (maybe even getting a former cast together for a revival!), test out a show you've had your eye on for a future, fully staged production, or try something completely different, we're here to support you in making that happen.

Online performance licences are available for both livestreamed performances and broadcasts of recorded productions. If you're able to perform your show to a physically present audience, we can also discuss options to present it online, allowing you to reduce the impact of social distancing on your audience capacity.

For more information on how the whole process works, check out:

We know there's lots to think about at the moment when planning your production – so if you have any further questions, please email our friendly Performing Rights team at rights@nickhernbooks.co.uk.

See below for some suggestions of great plays to consider for online performance. This is just a starting point, however – you can also use the Play Finder on this website to search through our full list of plays by lots of different criteria (genre, cast size, length etc.), or get in touch so we can help find the right show for you. 

Please note that, as usual, you'll need to secure approval and a licence for your production. Just because a play is included in the suggestions list below doesn't mean it's automatically available, and all applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Once you're ready to apply for your performance licence, you can do so here.

We want to say a huge thanks to all of the brilliant authors and agents who've worked hard with us to make these online performances possible. 

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Foxfinder

A darkly comic, spell-binding dystopian drama, winner of the 2011 Papatango New Writing Prize.

No Naughty Bits

A gloriously funny play about the nature of comedy, the operation of censorship, and the complex misunderstandings implicit in the Anglo-American relationship.

Brontë

A compelling literary detective story about the turbulent lives of the Brontë sisters - dramatised by Polly Teale and Shared Experience, the team behind After Mrs Rochester and Jane Eyre.

Sense and Sensibility (stage version)

By Jane Austen Adapted by Mark Healy

A faithful yet inventive adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, terrifically actable and readable.

The Railway Children (stage version)

By E. Nesbit Adapted by Mike Kenny

An imaginative stage adaptation of E. Nesbit's much-loved children's classic.

Tribes

A penetrating play about belonging, family and the limitations of communication.

Arabian Nights (RSC stage version)

A simple and delightfully inventive re-telling of the stories from the Arabian Nights.

A Tender Thing

Another Romeo and another Juliet in a strikingly different love story.

Eight

Eight compelling monologues offering a state-of-the-nation group portrait for the stage.

The Female of the Species

A deliciously wicked comedy that proves that the female of the species is not only deadlier, but funnier than the male.

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Headlong version)

Pirandello's classic play, updated for the twenty-first century by Headlong.

Kindertransport

A modern classic about one woman's struggle to come to terms with her past - brutally separated from her German Jewish parents at the age of 9 and brought to England with the promise of a new life...

Fast Labour

A powerful play about the growing culture of human exploitation in the UK, delving below the surface to reveal a personal account of life as a migrant worker.

Contractions

An ink-black comedy about the boundaries between work and play.

My Boy Jack

The tragic story of how Rudyard Kipling sent his son to his death in the First World War.

The Container

A harrowing, intense drama about people-trafficking, set inside a container lorry.

The Lottie Project (stage version)

An adaptation for the stage of this modern children's classic by the best-selling author and 2005 Children's Laureate.

Great Expectations (RSC stage version)

A gritty adaptation of Dickens' least sentimental love story with a cast of some of his most unforgettable characters.

100

A strikingly original play combining traditional storytelling with physical theatre, created by The Imaginary Body. Winner of a Fringe First Award at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Honour

An unsettling play about infidelity seen from the perspective of the three women involved: the wife, the lover and the daughter.

Emma (stage version)

A bold, witty and fresh adaptation of Jane Austen's novel which, while thoroughly modern, retains the spirit and much of the language of the original.

Under the Blue Sky

A triptych of love stories in a play about unrequited affection, obsession, sex, and the possibility of being happy.

Jane Eyre (Shared Experience stage version)

A bold and theatrically inventive adaptation of the literary classic that puts the interior life of the novel on stage.

After the Dance

Rattigan's brilliant attack on the hedonistic lifestyle of the ‘bright young things’ of the 1920s and 30s.

Pentecost

A valuable mural is discovered in a church in war-torn Eastern Europe. Part of David Edgar's trilogy of plays about post-Communist Eastern Europe.

Machinal

A powerful expressionist drama from the 1920s about the dependent status of women in an increasingly mechanised society, based on the true story of Ruth Snyder.