Top 10 Lists Announced for Most-Performed Plays and Musicals in High Schools

By Thomas Peter
December 16, 2010

Dramatics Magazine has released its annual list of the Top 10 most-produced plays and musicals in North American high schools.

Tony Award nominee John Cariani's Almost, Maine was named the most-performed high school play of 2010. The 2004 play, written by actor-playwright Cariani and depicting a mythical town in northern Maine, edged out plays with longer-standing high school histories, including A Midsummer Night's Dream and You Can't Take It With You.

Disney's Beauty and the Beast, the 1994 stage adaptation of the beloved 1991 animated film about a woman who helps a beast discover his princely self, was named the most-produced musical in high schools in the United States, followed by the Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty 2000 musical Seussical and the high school favorite Grease.

Here are the lists of most-performed plays and musicals in U.S. high schools:

Top 10 Plays
1) Almost, Maine
2) A Midsummer Night's Dream

3) You Can't Take It With You

4) Noises Off

5) Twelve Angry Men

6) Alice in Wonderland (various adaptations)

7) The Crucible

8) Our Town

9) Neil Simon’s Fools

10) A Christmas Carol (various adaptations)


Top 10 Musicals
1)
Disney's Beauty and the Beast
2) Seussical
3) Grease
4) Into the Woods
5) Footloose
6) The Wizard of Oz (multiple adaptations)

7) You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown
8) The Music Man
9) Once upon a Mattress
10) Thoroughly Modern Millie