Aside from being the month of copious pumpkin flavored foodstuffs, October also brings two perennial theatrical top ten lists that are worthy of note: American Theatre magazine’s list of the most produced plays in Theatre Communications Group theatres for the coming season and Dramatics magazine’s lists of the most produced plays, musicals and one-acts in high school theatre for the prior year. They both say a great deal about the state of theatre in their respective spheres of production, both by what’s listed explicitly, as well as by what doesn’t appear.

In the broadest sense, both lists are startlingly predictable, although for different reasons. If you happen to find a bookie willing to give you odds on predicting the lists, here’s the trick for each: for the American Theatre list, bet heavily on plays which appeared on Broadway, or had acclaimed Off-Broadway runs, in the past year or two. For the Dramatics list, bet heavily on the plays that appeared on the prior year’s list.

But in the interest of learning, let’s unpack each list not quite so reductively.

American Theatre

As I’ve written in the past, what happens in New York theatre is a superb predictor of what will happen in regional theatre in the coming seasons, especially when it comes to plays. Any play that makes it to Broadway, or gets a great New York Times review, is going to grab the attention of regional producers. Throw in Tony nominations, let alone a Tony win – or the Pulitzer – and those are the plays that will quickly crop up on regional theatre schedules.

Anyone who follows the pattern of production would have easily guessed that Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike would proliferate this year, being a thoughtful, literary based comedy with a cast of only six. That American Theatre lists 27 productions doesn’t even take into account the 11 theatres that did the show in 2013-14, and certainly there are non-TCG theatres which are doing the show as well. It’s no surprise that Durang has said he made more money this past year than in any other year of his career; it’s a shame that financial success has taken so long for such a prodigiously gifted writer and teacher.

In general, shows on the American Theatre list have about a three year stay, typically peaking in their second year on the list, but this can vary depending upon when titles are released by licensing houses and agents to regional theatres. 25 years ago (and more significantly years before that) theatres might have had to compete with commercial tours, but play tours are exceedingly rare birds these days, if not extinct.

Perhaps this rush to the familiar and popular and NYC-annointed is disheartening, but it’s worth observing that the American Theatre list notes how many productions each title gets, and that after the first couple of slots, we’re usually looking at plays that are getting 7 or 8 productions in a given season, across TCG’s current universe of 474 member companies (404 of which were included in this year’s figures). Since the magazine notes a universe of 1,876 productions, suddenly 27 stagings of a single show doesn’t seem so dominant after all. Granted, TCG drops Shakespeare from their calculations, but even he only counted for 77 productions of all of his plays across this field. So reading between the lines, the American Theatre list suggests there’s very little unanimity about what’s done at TCG member theatres in any given year, a less quantifiable achievement but an important one.

Dramatics

While titles come and go on the American Theatre list, stasis is the best word to describe the lists of most produced high school plays (it’s somewhat less true for musicals). Nine of the plays on the 2014 list were on the 2013 list; 2014 was topped by John Cariani’s Almost, Maine, followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the two titles were in reverse order the prior year. The other duplicated titles were Our Town, 12 Angry Men (Jurors), You Can’t Take It With You, Romeo and Juliet, The Crucible, Harvey and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Like the American Theatre list, the Dramatics survey doesn’t cover the entirety of high school theatre production; only those schools that are members of the Educational Theatre Association’s International Thespian Society have the opportunity to participate, representing more than 4,000 high schools out of a universe of 28,500 public, private and parochial secondary schools in the country. Unlike the Dramatics list, there are no hard numbers about how many productions each show receives, so one can only judge relative popularity.

Almost, Maine’s swift ascension to the top rungs of the list is extraordinary, but it’s due in no small part to its construction as a series of thematically linked scenes, originally played by just four actors but easily expandable for casts where actor salaries aren’t an issue. Looking at recent American Theatre lists, they tend to be topped by plays with small casts (Venus in Fur, Red, Good People and The 39 Steps), while the Dramatics list is the reverse, with larger cast plays dominating, in order to be inclusive of more students (though paling next to musicals where casts in school shows might expand to 50 or more).

The most important trend on the Dramatics list (which has been produced since 1938) is the lack of trends. Though a full assessment of the history of top high school plays would take considerable effort, it’s worth noting that Our Town was on the list not only in 2014 and 2013, but also in 2009, 1999 and 1989; the same is true for You Can’t Take It With You. Other frequently appearing titles are Arsenic and Old Lace, various adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, Harvey, and The Miracle Worker.

No doubt the lack of newer plays with large casts is a significant reason why older classic tend to rule this list; certainly the classic nature of these works and their relative lack of controversial elements play into it as well. But as I watched Sheri Wilner’s play Kingdom City at the La Jolla Playhouse a few weeks ago, in which a drama director is compelled to choose a play from the Dramatics list, I wondered: is the list self-perpetuating? Are there numerous schools that seek what’s mainstream and accepted at other schools, and so do the same plays propagate themselves because administrators see the Dramatics list as having an implied educational seal of approval?

That may well be, and if it’s true, it’s an unfortunate side effect of a quantitative survey. But it’s also worth noting that many of these plays, vintage though they may be, have common themes, chief among them exhortations to march to your own drummer, to matter how out of step you may be to the conventional wisdom. They may be artistic expressions from other eras about the importance of individuality, but in the hands of teachers thinking about more than just placating parents, they are also opportunities to celebrate those among us who may seem different or unique, and for fighting for what you believe in against prevailing sentiment or structures.

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Looking at musicals on the American Theatre list is a challenge, because their list is an aggregate of plays and musicals, and while many regional companies now do a musical or two, it’s much harder for any groundswell to emerge. In the last five years, only three musicals have made it onto the TCG lists, each for one year only: Into The Woods, Spring Awakening and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. That doesn’t mean there’s a dearth of musical production, it simply shows that the work is being done by companies outside of the TCG universe.

Musicals are of course a staple of high school theatre, but the top ten lists from Dramatics are somewhat more fluid. While staples like Guys and Dolls, Grease, Once Upon a Mattress, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown and Little Shop of Horrors maintain their presence, newer musicals arrive every year or two, with works like Seussical, Legally Blonde, Spelling Bee, and Thoroughly Modern Millie appearing frequently in recent years. At the peak spot, after a six-year run, Beauty and the Beast was bested this year by Shrek; as with professional companies, when popular new works are released into the market, they quickly rise to the top. How long they’ll stay is anyone’s guess, but I have little doubt that we’ll one day see Aladdin and Wicked settle in for long tenures.

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When I looked at both the American Theatre and Dramatics lists over a span of time, the distinct predictability of each was troubling. Coming out when they do, before most theatrical production for the next theatre season is set, I’d like to see them looked at not as any manner of affirmation, but as a challenge – whether to professional companies or school schedules. I admire and enjoy the plays that are listed here, and nothing herein should be construed as critical of any of these shows; audiences around the country deserve the opportunity to see them. While I do have the benefit of living in New York and seeing most of these popular shows there, I must confess that I am most intrigued by the theatre companies and school groups that might just say to themselves, ‘Let’s not do the shows, or too many of the shows, that appear on these lists. Let’s find something else.’ Those plays may never appear as part of any aggregation, but I suspect the groups’ work will be all the more interesting for it, benefiting both artists and audiences.

As the cab pulled into the driveway, I got a glimpse of a sign propped against a telephone pole, starkly gray, black and white. On it were the typical details of any theatre production: the company, the dates and times, the title of the show, the website. Depicted was a single leafless tree, suggesting perhaps Waiting For Godot, or Spoon River Anthology, or maybe even a spooky Halloween attraction. I knew the show I was headed to was going to be a heavy one, so the foreboding promised by the sign wasn’t inappropriate; it followed a dictum I believe in strongly, which is truth in advertising. I just didn’t expect this for a high school play.

The play in question, about which I knew next to nothing beyond a website marketing synopsis, was Infinite Black Suitcase by EM Lewis, a playwright new to me. It was being done as a “major black box production” at Staples High School in Westport CT, a school whose theatre program I have heard about for literally decades, knowing kids and parents of kids who had at one time or another been connected with the school. While challenges to other high school plays have taken me to other towns in Connecticut – Waterbury, Woodbridge, Trumbull, Milford – I happened to meet the head of the Staples drama program when we served together for one year (two meetings) on an advisory committee for Samuel French, the theatrical licensing company. So I’d been keeping an eye on what he was up to, even as more pressing issues in high school theatre took me elsewhere.

Had I visited the Staples Players website and found they were doing Twelve Angry Men/Women/People/Jurors or To Kill A Mockingbird, I might not have been so quick to head to Westport along with the commuter crowd on their way home on Thursday night. But the online description of the play, not out of character with the school’s past repertoire, about various residents of an Oregon town dealing both with impending death and the aftermath of prior losses seemed so incongruous in a high school setting – even a high school with a 200 seat black box in addition to a spacious main auditorium – that I had to go up and see for myself.

Jacob Leaf, Claire Smith & Jack Baylis in Infinite Black Suitcase at Staples High (photo by Kerry Long)

Before going, I looked up the playwright, wondering whether the author wrote specifically for high school productions, and discovered that she has a number of professionally produced works to her credit (the play premiered in Los Angeles in 2005) and that Infinite Black Suitcase was in fact receiving its high school premiere. This prompted me to ask Roth, who was directing the play with his wife Kerry Long, how he came to the play. He responded that the folks at French had put him on to it, as he had been looking for a relatively large cast contemporary play.

I attended the first of four performances, and until 10 minutes or so before curtain time, I wondered if anyone would be there, so empty was the parking lot and theatre entrance – as did some students who seemed connected with the show, milling in the hallway near the theatre. An audience did arrive, a bit tardy, filling the small theatre to perhaps a bit more than half of capacity. Once inside, the trappings of the school fell away and the environment resembled many an Off-Broadway house. Indeed, the fact that the theatre wasn’t completely full showed that challenging work is always a hard sell, regardless of whether it’s professional or academic. Of course, it was a school night.

Jack Bowman & Joe Badion in Infinite Black Suitcase at Staples High (photo: Kerry Long)

Obviously my intent is not to review the play or production, but I can say that it met one criteria I declared important when I first started writing about high school theatre, namely that the work challenged the students performing in it. Playing (mostly) grief stricken adults mourning or anticipating death in a series of short, intertwined scenes, the students were “punching above their weight,” rather than merely romping through an entertainment that catered to their natural, youthful exuberance. The play also fulfilled what Roth had told me led to its selection, in that the 16 actors were a genuine ensemble, each afforded at least one “moment” in the 80 minutes to showcase their abilities.

Contemporary drama is hardly unknown in high school theatre, although it was outside of my own experience years ago. A quick glance at the Staples repertoire over many years shows that, as did the most compelling portion of Michael Sokolove’s book Drama High, in which high school students performed Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Good Boys and True. That said, in the Educational Theatre Association’s survey of the most produced high school plays, only one contemporary play makes the top ten: John Cariani’s Almost Maine (at number one). Surely Cariani’s play stands atop the list because while originally produced with four actors and lots of doubling, it easily affords the opportunity for a larger cast to play its many roles without repetition, expanding to meet the interest and needs of high school drama, where musicals with casts of 50 are far from rare. Cariani’s new play, Love/Sick, might well appear on the list soon.

The rest of the EdTA list is decidedly older plays, from public domain works like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Importance of Being Earnest to American classics like Our Town, Harvey and You Can’t Take It With You. While I have affection for all of the plays which are most frequently seen, with a particular and deep admiration for Our Town, a play often mistaken for pablum when it is really a profound meditation on death, I do worry, as with musicals, that even as the canon of theatre literature grows, the majority of our high schools produce the same standards year after year, the experience at Staples, the popularity of The Laramie Project and Sokolove’s story of Levittown PA notwithstanding.

This may well be a byproduct of the downsizing of the American play. Ask any playwright and they’ll tell you how they have to craft their works for casts of four to six, preferably with a single set, in order to get them done; look at the most produced plays in America and you’ll find those small casts: Venus in Fur (two), Red (two), God of Carnage (four), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (six), and so on. So when high schools seek to involve as many students as possible in theatre outside of musicals, they’re forced back to the days when larger casts were de rigeur. On the one hand, we can say that this only reflects modern trends in professional theatre, and students should work with the same expectations, but in practice small cast plays either deny students the chance to learn about dramatic ensembles or the chance to tackle new work.

I have to hand it to Roth for putting his students up to the challenge of Infinite Black Suitcase, although I suspect it’s unlikely to be come a standard work in the high school repertory. But I’m also pleased to know that it’s not the only option out there. Student-written plays, although typically one-acts, afford high schoolers the opportunity to take on work by and about their peers, although that’s not without its challenges, as cases in Everett MA and Wilton CT have shown. Lend Me A Tenor author Ken Ludwig premiered one of his plays, a holiday show, at a high school near his home. There is also a thriving subset of writing targeting the academic market, though it is wholly unfamiliar to me.

One model that I wish were better-known or, better still, duplicated in the U.S., is the one forged by NT Connections in England, in which the National Theatre commissions new works by major contemporary playwrights specifically for secondary schools to perform. This may give the writers a chance to work on a larger canvas than they can with works seeking professional production, while letting the students take on modern plays crafted specifically for them that aren’t necessarily simplified for them or condescending to them, by writers they well might be reading about in the culture pages. Though I admire the concept, I regret knowing very few of these plays; I can, however, heartily recommend Mark Ravenhill’s Moliere riff Totally Over You.

I must come back to one last aspect of the experience of seeing Infinite Black Suitcase at Staples High. In my experience as an audience member seeing high school theatre, plays or musicals, I am always in the position of watching a show I’ve seen before, in many cases more than once, its words and music well known to me. With Suitcase, my experience was perhaps closer to the majority of my regular theatergoing precisely because I didn’t know it. I wasn’t spending the evening just seeing how well the kids managed to perform a familiar tale, I was actively engaged in watching the play itself, since I had no idea what would happen next and, for me, the Staples cast – of students I’ve never met, and so have no reason to respond to with indulgence or affection – is forever linked with the play, as with any show when one sees it for the first time. For Infinite Black Suitcase, they are my original cast.

P.S. I continue to learn a great deal about high school theatre as I see more and write more and as readers respond to what I write. If you have other examples of high school theatre giving students the opportunity to take on challenging contemporary or even new work, I hope you’ll share it in the comments section below. Teach me, and share so that other students and teachers can learn as well.