Wild & Wacky finds the outrageous comedy hiding in everyday life: eleven Humorous Interpretation scripts about bad jobs, worse dates, overbearing parents, and one very ambitious pinky finger.
Sample scripts include: A speech competitor spends her whole HI round telling the judge exactly how much everyone in the room is dreading her performance in H.I. Train Wreck. A big-box store supervisor trains a new hire in the fine art of looking busy in How to do Nothing Successfully. A pinky finger tired of being the hand's most useless digit sets out to prove her worth in Pinky's Big Break.
In this collection, the laughs come from recognizable people (and one talking lizard) pushed a few steps past reasonable.
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Format: Humorous Interpretation
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Cast: 1 performer, multiple characters (one piece for 2 performers)
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Tone: Everyday absurdity, from workplace and dating comedy to a roast of the speech circuit itself
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Content: A mix of clean pieces and edgier dark comedy, noted script by script in the extensive description file included with download
All eleven scripts are NSDA-eligible and properly formatted with copyright and ISBN. It's a compact, tournament-proven set of HI material in one purchase.. Plus, they work well for comedy showcases and classroom character work, too.
Download digital files instantly after purchase. These comedies are ready for rehearsal and performance right now!
SCRIPTS INCLUDED
Ahidjo — Christopher Marianetti and Cormac Copperhead
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
A magic flower keeps dragging a fed-up teenager back through his own family's history, one increasingly chaotic ancestor at a time.
Jacub is fed up with his dad Norbert's nonstop lectures about chores and respect. So when a strange creature called a Gorblan hands him a flower and warns him never to eat it, Jacub does the math (Everyone knows Gorblans always lie) and eats a petal. Each petal drops his soul into a different ancestor: his great-grandfather getting nagged over dinner, then, in the middle of a lecture from know-it-all friend Pronak, his own father as a boy fleeing wartime Poland with a German soldier closing in, and finally the ship carrying young Norbert to America. Somewhere along the way, Jacub starts to understand why Dad turned out the way he did. Fast, absurd time-hopping with a heartfelt father-son payoff.
Includes wartime references and a soldier's threat of violence, all played for comedy; otherwise clean.
The Conversation Zone — Doug McConnaha
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
One actor cycles through a lineup of strangers who all have way too much to say to whoever's stuck listening to them.
Everyone here needs to talk, and nobody needs to listen. Meet the grocery-line oversharer with a rash and a gas problem, the movie superfan who skipped school and plans to recap all six previous films before the doors open, the nervous passenger sure he's being tailed, the math-obsessed classmate who cannot stop mid-monologue, and an in-flight salesman pushing the "Ear Wax Blaster." Each one is fully committed to their own oblivious logic. Perform them in order or shuffle the deck; every voice stands on its own. A character showcase built on everyday social discomfort.
Clean, with mild bathroom humor.
Daisy Chains — Michael Dean
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer
A single dad enrolls in a class to learn French braiding for his daughter's dance recital, and it turns into the hardest thing he's ever tried to get right.
Welcome to "Daddy Does Hair," where Paul and a roomful of equally nervous dads practice on mannequin heads. His ten-year-old, Megan, has a big recital coming up and has decided Dad is doing her hair. Brushing? Manageable. Flat iron? Risky. The French braid? Pure nemesis. As his fingers fumble, Paul's mind drifts to past misfires (a homemade flower costume that upstaged the whole class), to his marriage coming apart, and to the fear that he isn't enough now that Megan's mom is gone. By the end, the instructor's patient encouragement is about a lot more than hair. Warm, self-deprecating comedy with a tender heart.
Clean, with references to divorce and a parent's self-doubt handled gently.
H.I. Train Wreck — Marie Pawelec
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
A Humorous Interpretation competitor spends her whole round narrating exactly how much everyone in the room — including the judge — is dreading being there.
Our competitor turns to the judge and lays it out: this is what a truly terrible HI round looks like. Then she proves it, one disaster at a time. An overacting fairy-tale storyteller. A monotone declamation speaker. A wildly overwrought DI performer confessing to killing Mufasa. A competitor who never makes it past her intro. An oratory speaker who has clearly wandered into the wrong room. Meanwhile, the judge's ballot comments get more savage by the minute, and the competitor's own fate arrives with a perfectly ironic twist. An inside-baseball roast of the speech circuit with impeccable timing.
Includes joking references to violence and self-harm as parody-round content, with no actual harm depicted; otherwise clean.
How to do Nothing Successfully — Clint Snyder
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer
A big-box store supervisor trains a new hire in the fine art of looking busy while doing absolutely nothing.
Ricky is MallMart's resident expert in looking busy, and his new hire is getting the full curriculum. Lesson one: "I'll check in the back." Lesson two: unwanted shopping carts go in the creek. Lesson three: the fighting fish in the pet department are a betting opportunity. And above all, always look occupied. The mentorship slides from mildly unethical to gleefully destructive, and the reason Ricky is so eager to share his wisdom is the punchline the whole piece has been quietly setting up. Deadpan and confident from first shift to last.
Includes dark jokes about minor injuries and property damage; no profanity.
L.gAy.P.D. — Frank Joseph
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
A hard-nosed cop convinced his future son-in-law is gay recruits his partner to help him find out — on the job, with disastrous results.
Roger is a hard-nosed cop who has decided his daughter Molly's fiancé, Adam, is a "skeezball," and suspects he's gay. His plan: drag Adam along for a day on the job with partner Nathan and see what shakes loose. Cue a meth lab raid, some interrogations, and an abandoned-warehouse stakeout. Every time Adam frets over his outfit or wipes down the squad car with lime spray, Roger's suspicions climb, right up until he pulls a gun. Then Molly steps in, a surprise about Nathan's real job drops, and everything Roger thought he knew falls apart. The satire aims squarely at Roger's prejudice, and the ending knocks it flat.
Roger's homophobia drives the plot and is directly confronted and undercut by the ending; mild language, no profanity.
Michael Jackson Made Me Do It — Gregg Moeller
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
Two rural neighbors are convinced Delbert is possessed by Satan, when really he just can't stop reciting Michael Jackson lyrics.
Delbert is fresh out of detox, and he's turned up at sister Lurleen's trailer speaking entirely in Michael Jackson lyrics. Obviously, it's Satan. Lurleen calls in her friend Mavis, and the two launch a homemade exorcism powered by Elvis quotes, a search-engine tutorial, Diet Coke, and eventually a copy of "The Elvis Cookbook" swung like a club. They misidentify every single reference while Delbert floats around the living room working through the hits, and the eventual "cure" is a lot less mystical than they think. Wall-to-wall malapropisms in a gloriously misguided exorcism.
References alcohol addiction and detox as backstory, played for comedy; no profanity.
Pinky's Big Break — Brooke Anderson
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
Jen's right pinky finger decides she's done being the most useless digit on the hand and sets out to prove her worth.
Thumb has confidence. Index is the boss. Ring gets all the romance. Pinky gets nothing, and she's done with it. Her one-finger campaign for relevance goes about how you'd expect: a fumbled alarm clock, a jammed microwave, and a botched team-up with Thumb on a work report, all while Jen's exasperated hand just tries to get through the day. Then Jen comforts her niece Annie with a pinky promise, and Pinky finally sees what she was for all along. Straight-faced personification comedy with a sweet, heartfelt finish.
Clean throughout, and safe for any audience.
Spike — Paul Davis
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
A struggling stand-up comedian keeps bombing on stage, until his talking pet lizard accidentally steals the show.
Phil's shock-value jokes get him booed off his dad's nightclub stage every night. The ventriloquist act with the broken string? No help. Dad's ultimatums? Also no help. Enter Spike, Phil's best friend, who happens to be a talking lizard. Spike talks his way into the act with zero material and somehow wins over the crowd, and Dad, in a way Phil never has. A comedy about bombing on purpose, with a running gag that pays off in the final scene.
Includes off-color jokes (about death, disability, and violence) performed within the story as material that bombs with the crowd; no actual harm depicted.
The Ultimate Drama — Garlock and Taylor
Humorous Interpretation · 2 performers, multiple characters
Two performers race through an ever-escalating pile of over-the-top backstory — mental disorders, wartime tragedy, and worse — daring each other to top it.
It starts with an autistic brother calling for "Brother Mikey" and goes off the rails from there. An AA-meeting survivor story. A therapy session that flashes back to a wartime concentration camp. A baseball broadcast hijacked by an aggrieved Norwegian fan. And holding it all together, recurring Mentos jingle breaks. By the end, the two performers are openly trying to out-confess each other, topping the whole pile with a punchline about auto insurance shame. A gleefully over-the-top send-up of overwrought competitive drama.
Contains rapid dark-humor references to mental illness, eating disorders, wartime violence, and abortion, plus mild language; recommend reviewing before performing for younger or sensitive audiences.
Video Dating — Doug McConnaha
Humorous Interpretation · 1 performer, multiple characters
One actor auditions a parade of wildly mismatched women for a video dating service, each one less self-aware than the last.
The video dating service is open for business, and the applicants are... a lot. A ditzy aspiring supermodel. A flower child who never left the sixties. A tone-deaf country singer, guitar in hand. A ventriloquist losing a power struggle with her increasingly hostile dummy. A math-camp nerd counting phone rings. A lonely accountant pining for her married boss. And finally, that accountant's mother, offering cash to anyone who'll take her daughter off her hands. Every tape explains exactly why they're still single. A rapid-fire parade of broad, distinct characters.
Clean, with mild innuendo and references to 1960s drug culture played for comedy.