Dan Roberts
Dan Roberts and his wife, Christina, are the owners of the Academy of Performing Arts in Grandview, Missouri. Dan also directs the school's choir and teaches drama, piano, and voice. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in music education and has been named "Outstanding Educator of the Year" and "Missouri Music Teacher of the Year." He has worked professionally as an actor, singer, and pianist since 1964 and has directed over 150 productions throughout the United States, including two years as the state director of the Miss Missouri Pre-teen Pageant. Many of his more than 4,000 past and current students are active professionally in the fields of stage and screen, and his choirs have been nationally recognized for their high quality and achievements.
Scrooged Up!
Comedy by Dan Roberts
26 pages
4 m, 6 w, 1 flexible, 1 child
The Hillsdale Community Theater wants to produce "A Christmas Carol," but they don't have enough actors to play the extraordinarily large number of parts. So their undaunted director, being resourceful (if not totally realistic), has triple and quadruple-cast the roles. And since everyone in sight has been recruited, the cast also fills in as costumers, stagehands and technicians. The impossibility of this situation brings tensions to a comical head as the final rehearsal invites one calamity after another. "Scrooged Up!" provides a Dickens of a time for ever...
Saturday Matinee
Comedy by Dan Roberts
29 pages
3 m, 7 w, 4 flexible
Movie audiences can often be as entertaining as the film itself. This imaginative one-act comedy takes place during the waiting period before a movie begins, offering a rare look at the personalities and idiosyncrasies of typical teen audience members. Alice only wants to enjoy the movie alone but someone's always invading her space. Kent doesn't know how much he wants to flirt with his date Maria, and she is shocked at her reactions. Mindy is a social outcast and just ripe for snotty Laura's tricks. Meanwhile, Ben continues to chow down, while two latecomers...
DUI=DOA
Drama by Dan Roberts
24 pages
Flexible casting
The effects of drunk driving are brought home in these two very short one-acts combined under one title. In "Only Seventeen" (3 m, 4 w, 2 flexible), Corey Martin is dead from drinking and driving. At his funeral he desperately calls out to his family and friends,"I can't be dead. I'm only 17!" but no one hears him. A fellow student delivers a eulogy full of irony as Corey's friends and family think aloud about the senselessness of his death. In "The Waiting Room" (3 m, 6 w, 4 flexible), young people find themselves in a dark room, unsure of where they are or ...
One Hundred Elves
Comedy by Dan Roberts
28 pages
3 m, 5 w, 7 flexible.
Theatrical producer J.W. Allsworth is putting together a spectacular holiday production promising to use 100 authentic elves for the big finale. Phelps, the head elf at the North Pole, says he will have the exact number of singers and dancers at the first rehearsal. He’ll keep it as a surprise for Santa when the money earned will pay off the workshop mortgage. But when Phelps comes up short of elves because Santa has already downsized the staff, Phelps must organize a worldwide search for all past employees. He finally comes up with exactly the required numbe...