There’s something uniquely powerful about a solo play. With just a single performer on stage, these productions strip theatre down to its most essential elements: storytelling, emotion, and connection. Whether you’re a theatre company looking for a budget-friendly production, an actor seeking a showcase piece, or an educator wanting an intimate yet impactful show, these one-person plays are the perfect place to start.
Alex Edelman’s Just for Us by Alex Edelman
Photo by Matthew Murphy, 2023 Broadway production
After following an anti-Semitic tweet aimed in his direction down an online rabbit hole, comedian Alex Edelman finds himself in an unexpected place: at a meeting of White Nationalists in Queens, face-to-face with the people behind the keyboards. What follows comprises the backbone of this show, equal parts hilarious and gripping, that made its way from small London theaters to a unanimously well-received hit run on Broadway. Within Just for Us, Edelman, who was awarded a Special Tony Award® for the show, explores religion, cultural identity, assimilation, empathy, gorillas that speak sign language—and what it means to be confronted with hatred. Script includes a Foreward by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Winner of the 2024 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for HBO’s telecast
Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan, with Jonny Donahoe
You’re six years old. Mum’s in hospital. Dad says she’s “done something stupid.” She finds it hard to be happy. So you start to make a list of everything that’s brilliant about the world. Everything that’s worth living for. 1. Ice cream. 2. Kung Fu movies. 3. Burning things. 4. Laughing so hard you shoot milk out your nose. 5. Construction cranes. 6. Me. You leave it on her pillow. You know she’s read it because she’s corrected your spelling. Soon, the list will take on a life of its own. A play about depression and the lengths we will go to for those we love.
I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright
Based on a true story, and inspired by interviews conducted by the playwright over several years, I Am My Own Wife tells the fascinating tale of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a real-life German transvestite who managed to survive both the Nazi onslaught and the repressive East German Communist regime.
Winner of the 2004 Tony Award® for Best Play and the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey by James Lecesne
One actor portrays every character in a small Jersey Shore town as he unravels the story of Leonard Pelkey, a tenaciously optimistic and flamboyant fourteen-year-old boy who goes missing. A luminous force of nature whose magic is only truly felt once he is gone, Leonard becomes an unexpected inspiration as the town’s citizens question how they live, who they love, and what they leave behind.
Ann by Holland Taylor
Ann is an intimate, no-holds-barred portrait of Ann Richards, the legendary late Governor of Texas. This inspiring and hilarious play brings us face to face with a complex, colorful, and captivating character bigger than the state from which she hailed. Written and originally performed by Emmy Award-winner Holland Taylor, Ann takes a revealing look at the impassioned woman who enriched the lives of her followers, friends, and family.
Buyer & Cellar by Jonathan Tolins
Alex More has a story to tell. A struggling actor in L.A., he takes a job working in the Malibu basement of a beloved megastar. One day, the Lady Herself comes downstairs to play. It feels like real bonding in the basement, but will their relationship ever make it upstairs? Buyer & Cellar is an outrageous comedy about the price of fame, the cost of things, and the oddest of odd jobs.
Draw the Circle by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen
The hilarious and deeply moving story of conservative Muslim mother at her wits’ end, a Muslim father who likes to tell jokes, and a queer American woman trying to make a good impression on her Indian in-laws. In a story about family and love and the things we do to be together, one immigrant family must come to terms with a child who defies their most basic expectations of what it means to have a daughter…and one woman will redefine the limits of unconditional love. This unique play compassionately brings to life the often ignored struggle that a family goes through when their child transitions from one gender to another.
Where We Belong by Madeline Sayet
Madeline Sayet’s one-person play is a celebration of language and investigation into the impulses that divide and connect us as people. The play follows Achokayis as she travels to England to pursue a degree in Shakespeare, grappling with the question of what it means to remain or leave her own home at Mohegan, as the Brexit vote threatens to disengage the United Kingdom from the wider world. Moving between nations that have failed to reckon with their ongoing roles in colonialism, she finds comfort in the journeys of her Mohegan ancestors who traveled to England in the 1700s to help her people. Achokayis’s transformation journey leaves us with the question, what does it mean to belong in an increasingly globalized world?
An Iliad by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare
An Iliad is a modern-day retelling of Homer’s classic. Poetry and humor, the ancient tale of the Trojan War and the modern world collide in this captivating theatrical experience. The setting is simple: the empty theater. The time is now: the present moment. The lone figure onstage is a storyteller—possibly Homer, possibly one of the many bards who followed in his footsteps. He is fated to tell this story throughout history.
Open by Crystal Skillman
Open is a magic act that reveals itself to be a resurrection. A woman called the Magician presents a myriad of tricks for our entertainment, yet her performance seems to be attempting the impossible—to save the life of her partner, Jenny. But is our faith in her illusions enough to rewrite the past? The clock is ticking, the show must go on, and, as impossible as it may seem, this Magician’s act may be our last hope against a world filled with intolerance and hate.
