Don’t have a ton of actors for your production? You can still put on a memorable show with these small-cast musicals that have six or fewer parts!
Hedwig and the Angry Inch Text by John Cameron Mitchell, Music & Lyrics by Stephen Trask
It tells the story of “internationally ignored song stylist” Hedwig Schmidt, a fourth-wall smashing East German rock ‘n’ roll goddess who also happens to be the victim of a botched sex-change operation, which has left her with just “an angry inch.” This outrageous and unexpectedly hilarious story is dazzlingly performed by Hedwig (née Hansel) in the form of a rock gig/stand-up comedy routine backed by the hard-rocking band “The Angry Inch.” Using songs and monologues, Hedwig tells her story, which began in the former East Berlin where as Hansel he meets Luther, an American GI who promises to take the young man to the States on the condition that he switch his sex. After the bungled operation, Luther abandons newly named Hedwig in a Kansas trailer park, where she turns to music and meets geeky Tommy Speck, whom she takes under her wing and soon falls for. Tommy steals her songs, achieves rock star fame, and Hedwig is once again cast aside. She decides to demand redress and stalks Tommy’s world tour, performing in the T.G.I. Fridays that are situated next door to his stadiums. Hedwig describes her life’s search for “The Origin of Love” and her other half. It’s a rocking ride, funny, touching, and ultimately inspiring to anyone who has felt life gave them an inch when they deserved a mile.
Cast: 2 Any
Hundred Days Book by The Bengsons & Sarah Gancher, Music & Lyrics by The Bengsons
Hundred Days is an uncensored, exhilarating and heartrending true story about embracing uncertainty, taking a leap, and loving as if you only had 100 days to live. With magnetic chemistry and anthemic folk-punk music, creators Abigail and Shaun Bengson explore a fundamental question: how do we make the most of the time that we have?
Cast: 6 Any
Los Otros Book & Lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh, Music by Michael John Lachiusa
Through a series of beautiful and intimate moments, two Californians, Lillian and Carlos, explore significant moments in their lives, discovering they are linked in unexpected ways. Semi-autobiographical, Los Otros captures a universal story of interconnectedness, love, risk, and revelation through the lens of two people’s lives.
Cast: 1F / 1M
Glory Days Music & Lyrics by Nick Blaemire, Book by James Gardiner
A year after graduating high school, four best friends reconnect on their old school’s football field. Will has called the boys together with a mission: to hack into the sprinkler system so that it goes off when the jocks who bullied them in high school take the field for a charity game. But as the guys wait for instructions on how to break into the system, they quickly realize how dramatically their lives have grown apart. With a soaring pop-rock score, Glory Days is a poignant and witty coming-of-age story about friends searching for understanding and validation as they face the consequences of growing up. Contains adult language.
Cast: 4M
Bed and Sofa Music by Polly Pen, Libretto by Laurence Klavan, Based on the Film by Abram Room
In Moscow, in 1926, a housing crisis raged. In a cramped apartment, Ludmilla, a put-upon housewife, lives in dreamy complacency with her cheerful despot of a husband, Kolya. When one day, Kolya’s handsome comrade, Volodya, arrives from the country but can find no lodgings, Kolya offers him their sofa. When Kolya returns early from a business trip, he is shocked to discover that Ludmilla and Volodya have become lovers. Kolya moves out, but there is still nowhere to live, so he reluctantly returns, taking the sofa, and leaving Ludmilla and Volodya the bed. Kolya stalls the new couple’s lovemaking with endless games of checkers, so that slowly, to Ludmilla’s frustration, Volodya becomes more interested in the manly sport of checkers than in sex. Finally, Volodya reveals himself to be just as much a domestic despot as Kolya. So Ludmilla banishes Volodya to the sofa and takes the bed for herself. Ludmilla’s “marriage” to the two men has already had its consequences as she is pregnant. The two men bicker over who is the father and finally decree: Ludmilla must have an abortion. Acquiescing, Ludmilla waits her turn in a frighteningly efficient clinic. But seeing a living, breathing baby out the window convinces her to leave, without the procedure. She packs up and abandons her two “husbands,” declaring them unworthy to be fathers, and Kolya and Volodya find themselves alone in the close Moscow flat. They have no choice: As Ludmilla rides alone into the exciting unknown, Kolya takes the bed and Volodya the sofa.
Cast: 1F / 2M
Broadbend, Arkansas Libretto by Ellen Fitzhugh & Harrison David Rivers, Music & Additional Lyrics by Ted Shen
A Black family grapples with decades of inequality, violence, and suppression in the South. Benny, an orderly at a nursing home, delicately balances his role as a caregiver to an ornery white resident who shares a contentious past with his white boss, while at the same time caring for his own family as the fight for equality grips the nation in the midst of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Twenty-seven years later, his daughter, Ruby, struggles to understand an incident of police brutality against her 15-year-old son. This unique musical, spanning three decades and three generations, asks us to contemplate the cycle of violence in this country and how we will find hope and create change against the backdrop of hate that plagues America.
Cast: 1F / 1M
DIVA: Live from Hell Book & Characters by Nora Brigid Monahan, Music & Lyrics by Alexander Sage Oyen
As president of the drama club at Ronald Reagan High School and the star of every school play, Desmond Channing spent most of his short life in the spotlight. But when Evan Harris, a hotshot transfer from New York, challenges his throne, Desmond responds, as any diva would, with lethal force. Now, stuck in the Seventh Circle, Hell’s most squalid cabaret venue, Desmond is forced to relive his disturbing tale of woe. As he presents his one-millionth consecutive show, Desmond performs with a desperate vigor in the hopes that he can prove he’s repented and be freed from this eternal, campy torment.
Cast: 1 Any
Five Course Love Book, Music & Lyrics by Gregg Coffin
Three actors play fifteen different characters in five different restaurants on the hunt for one true love. The evening begins at Dean’s Old-Fashioned All-American Down-Home Bar-B-Que Texas Eats, where a blind date goes charbroiled wrong. Next, at the Trattoria Pericolo, a mob wife has a secret rendezvous behind her husband’s back. At Der Schlupfwinkel Speiseplatz, a waiter, a dominatrix and her kept man discover at the same hilarious moment that they are all dating each other. In Ernesto’s Cantina, a hill bandit and his rival battle for the hand of the beautiful Rosalinda. And at the Star-Lite Diner, a waitress pines for her true love and gets a little help from Cupid in making her dreams come true.
Cast: 1F / 2M
Goblin Market By Polly Pen & Peggy Harmon, Music by Polly Pen, Adapted from the Poem by Christina Rossetti
Two proper Victorian sisters, both now grown women and mothers, return to their childhood nursery to relive the haunting memories of their youth. Magically, they are transported back to their girlhood, as their nursery becomes a woodland glen peopled by bizarre goblins who entice them with luscious fruits and promises of unimagined ecstasies. One of the sisters, Laura, partakes of the forbidden offerings, while her sibling, Lizzie, bargains desperately with the fey creatures to save her from inexorably falling under their spell. Blending music, poetry and entrancing imagery, the play is a dazzling journey through the psyches of the two sisters as they struggle to regain the present and to reconcile the fervent, erotic yearnings of their adolescence with the matter-of-fact world that they now inhabit. Happily they succeed, but their voyage in and out of the past—and through the labyrinths of their vivid imaginations—weaves an enchanted spell that will linger long in the memory.
Cast: 2F
Honky Tonk Angels by Ted Swindley
When three gutsy gals from different backgrounds take charge of their lives, they decide to follow their honky tonk dreams all the way to the city of Nashville. Combining 30 classic country tunes (including “Stand By Your Man,” “9 to 5,” “Harper Valley PTA” and more!) Honky Tonk Angels is a hilarious, foot-stomping good time.
Cast: 3F
The Pin-Up Girls by James Hindman & Jeffrey Lodin
From The Andrew Sisters to hip-hop! From World War I to Afghanistan. The Pin-Up Girls sing a cavalcade of hits inspired by letters home from our troops overseas! While singing at their local VFW hall, Leanne and her friends stumble upon a huge stash of letters that go back a hundred years. Inspired by what they find— funny, romantic, heartbreaking, and… sexy— the ladies put on a show that celebrates the guys and gals who fight to defend our country.
Cast: 3F / 1M
Route 66 Written & Created by Roger Bean, Musical Arrangements by Brian Baker
Take a dollop of Grease, mix in some Pump Boys and Dinettes, and add a generous dose of Forever Plaid and you’ve got the high-octane fun of Route 66! Beginning with the sounds of 1950s Chicago and traveling along the ‘Main Street of America’ to the California coast with the surf music of the 1960s, this exciting musical revue features 34 of the greatest ‘Rock ‘n’ Road’ hits of the 20th century. Songs include “Dead Man’s Curve,” “King of the Road,” “Little Old Lady from Pasadena,” “Beep Beep,” “Six Days on the Road,” “Little GTO,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” and many more. Get your kicks with this smash coast-to-coast hit musical revue!
Cast: 4M
Thrill Me, The Leopld & Loeb Story Book, Music & Lyrics by Stephen Dolginoff
Relationships can be murder. Thrill Me: The Leopold & Loeb Story is a two-character musical drama that recounts the chilling true story of the legendary duo who committed one of the most infamous and heinous crimes of the twentieth century. Focusing on their obsessive relationship and utilizing Leopold’s 1958 parole hearing as a framework, Thrill Me reveals the series of events in 1924 Chicago that led about-to-be law students Leopold and Loeb to be forever remembered as “the thrill killers.” Nathan Leopold was passionate about Richard Loeb, who was passionate about crime and excitement. They created a secret agreement to satisfy each other’s needs. Soon Richard convinced Nathan that they embodied Nietzsche’s idea of the “Superman” and were above society. Then he drew him into his plan to lure a young boy to his death just to prove they could get away with it. But soon their perfect crime unraveled due to a careless mistake. Or was it so careless?
Cast: 2M
