The Future is Short: Contemporary Short Plays for High School and College Students

Have you struggled to find short plays that challenge actors and directors for class and production?

Do you require plays that are 10 minutes in length for competitions or class work?

Are you interested in reading plays from some of the most exciting contemporary American writers?

This anthology solves the above problems for theatre teachers and their students, offering excellent, contemporary material written for high school and college age actors within the last ten years. Each play selected features a distinct and unique voice in this eclectic and diverse volume targeted toward college and high school age actors, directors, and audiences. In these pages, you’ll find a delightful mix of plays - comedic, dramatic, thrilling, coming-of-age, political, silly, and just plain strange - created in the last few years.

The 20 plays all feature no more than 5 characters, with a mix of gender roles for actors of different ages. Written by some of the most exciting contemporary voices in American theatre, they draw on themes that resonate with young people today and offer challenging roles that push and develop actors and directors.

Each play is formally inventive and expands the boundaries of traditional drama to offer scope for different styles of performance, meaning there is a range of material to suit different student needs. Expertly crafted to run under 15 minutes, these plays offer concrete teaching tools that can be enjoyed by performers of different abilities as well as audiences.

In addition, at the back of the anthology are materials that give readers insight into how the new work featured in the anthology was developed, and provides structures and ideas for developing your own original short plays.

• Publication date: 3 September 2026
• Page count: 224
• Dimensions: Height 234 mm; Width 156 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN-13: 9781350620926