Almost, Maine

[PatrickDC]

Playbill tweeted about this past year's most produced high school productions.

ALMOST, MAINE continues at the top of the list of plays, fourth consecutive year. I read about this on John Cariani's Wikipedia page a couple years ago and remember thinking, "Yeah, right." But it's true. I'm surprised other classic or modern plays aren't more common. 

I've never seen the play, so any insights why this is? John must make a nice little piece of coin from the royalties. 

[dramamama611]

Why is it done? A bunch of reasons: it's adorable,it's easy to rehearse, lots of parts, sentimentality, most of the scenes are incredibly accessible to younger people and relatively simple sets.   It can also be done easily cut (with permission - which is always granted to the best of my knowledge)

 

I directed it about 5 years ago and we all had a great time, and the audience loved it to.

 

If you have specific questions, hit me up.

 

(BTW, my hs group - not the same kids that performed in it - had a talk back session after Band's Visit and Cariani was part of it.  I chatted with him for a few moments afterwards where I told him how much we had enjoyed producing it.  He seemed incredibly touched by that.)

[IdinaBellFoster]

It's also popular because you can expand the casting. You can do it as written with the four actors, or expand it to include new actors in each scene. It's a popular college property as well. 

[thealtoslament]

dramamama611 said: 
(BTW, my hs group - not the same kids that performed in it - had a talk back session after Band's Visit and Cariani was part of it. I chatted with him for a few moments afterwards where I told him how much we had enjoyed producing it. He seemed incredibly touched by that.)"

My junior year of high school, our spring play was Almost, Maine. Almost a year later, a group of us (including a lot of us who had been in Almost Maine the previous year) went on a school sponsored trip to see Something Rotten! when the OBC was still there. We stagedoored afterwards and someone mentioned to Cariani we were all from the same high school and had just done it last year, and he went down the line of 10-12 high schoolers and asked us who we’d played, how we’d staged it, etc. It was very cool. 

[nasty_khakis]

I've spoken with several writers who don't even try to get productions done by major regionals or in NYC. They specifically write formulaic plays with large/adaptable casts to be done by high schools, especially for one-act competitions.

[dramamama611]

Yes, and?  Not sure what this has to do with this particular play.  (It had two NY productions.)

[KFC1991]

I read an article a couple of years ago that attributed the popularity to the fact that the scenes were two people scenes which makes it easier to schedule rehearsals ( it's tricky to get a bunch of high school kids together to rehearse long scenes with a bunch of characters).

Plus all of the above mentioned reasons.