Theatrefolk’s Top 10: Gender-Flexible Plays

Time for a Tfolk Top Ten Plays For….

Gender Flexible Roles. Sometimes you have more girls than guys. Once in a while you have more guys than girls. And sometimes you have students who want to choose their own path. You want to give all your students an opportunity to take the stage but how do you account for your ever changing mix?

Click the link and you’ll be taken to the webpage for each play. There you’ll get the details and read sample pages. Every play gives you gender-fluid options.

All the best with your search!

Smarty Pants (8E)

All the characters in this play can be played by the gender of your choice. Name options included. Dallas is a real smarty pants but there’s more Play-doh than Plato and more colouring than Van Gogh in this advanced placement class. Will Dallas figure out Kindergarten High or flunk?

Apostrophe’s (13E)

Playwright Bradley Hayward knows how important it is to offer casting options. (He also wrote the above Smarty Pants) All the characters can be played by the gender of your choice. Are you sometime’s amazed at how many apostrophe’s s’ome people manage to fi’t into s’entence’s? Then you’re not the only one. That’s just the problem that needs to be solved in this outrageous comedy.

The Absolutely Insidious and Utterly Terrifying Truth About Cat Hair (8E + ensemble)

You can fit as many students as you need into this play. Cat Hair is infinite after all. No matter how much hair you brush off of a cat, there will always be more. Always. It is the secret driving force behind business and politics, and is plotting the downfall of humanity even as we speak.

This play has a number of object personified roles as well which can be a great challenge for character development.

They Eat Sunshine, Not Zebras (11E)

Nothing stands in the way of the field’s orderly life. Until they wake up one morning to see a yellow dandelion in their midst. A dandelion will turn their orderly way of life upside-down. A dandelion must be destroyed. Isn’t that what you do when something is different? All characters can be played by either gender.

Shuddersome: Tales of Poe (4M/5W/25E; Doubling possible, gender flexible)

Specters, ghosts and ghouls come alive in this vivid theatrical adaptation of some of Edgar Allen Poe’s best-known works. The main characters in “The Tell Tale Heart” are specifically identified as “Young” and “Old” to make them as flexible as possible. And that’s just one story, feel free to change the genders in all the stories.

Clowns With Guns (A Vaudeville) (16E)

A theatrical and absurd look at the repeated and seemingly endless cycle of school violence. It happens, everyone is terribly upset, things continue on as normal, it happens again. All characters can be played by either gender.

Inanimate (2W/16E)

This play plays with personification and thus gives you a lot of gender flexibility. Life is a little different for Ani. She talks to her coffee pot and alarm clock. She even talks to her toaster. Is she living in a happy, carefree kids’ show or is it something more serious? What if you talk to inanimate objects and they talk back? What if they write hate texts to your friends? Try to control you? Make you stay inside with the blinds drawn and the lights turned down low? What if Ani’s life is not happy at all?

Anonymous (1M/3W/15E)

Anonymous is a story of every teenager: the new kid trying to fit in, the best friends, the love interests, the kid in the corner with their secret, the group of individuals each trying to belong.

The teenagers of Anonymous have no names because they are “Me” and “You.” They are everyone.

The Perils of Modern Education (3M/19E)

The Perils of Modern Education are many! From standardized theatre tests that call for an exact number of steps in a scene, to trying to eat green in the cafeteria, to dealing with caffeine withdrawal, to giving Shakespeare advice on his college application essay. A comedic romp through the stresses and struggles of making it through the school day. Gender flexible casting, doubling possibilities, and easy to stage.

The Baloney, the Pickle, the Zombies, and Other Things I Hide From My Mother (1M/7W; Doubling possible)

Together with his living baloney-minon, Meyer, Trevor is about to embark on a night in which he will face an angry neighbor, be questioned by police, bring a pickle to life, and discover that his food may actually be smarter than he is… all while trying to keep everything secret from his mother and little sister.

Planning on performing one of these or another Theatrefolk play? Let us know all about it with pictures and highlights – we might even feature you on our site! Click here to submit your story.