We started with family-friendly shows--Bad Year for Tomatoes, Maid to Order (Tom Taggart), God's Favorite, Subject to Change, Play On, Soapy Murder Case, Exit the Body, Steel Magnolias, female Odd Couple, Love by the Bolt (Feydeau), June Groom, Rumors,  Love is Murder, The Butler Did it (and Did it Again), Greater Tuna (using several actors in 2 or 3 roles each) to name a few.  Anything by Pat Cook, Rick Abbot, Tim Kelly has well defined characters and easy sets. 

 

Lend me a Tenor, Moon Over Broadway, Inspecting Carol and Noises Off are wonderful but more challenging.  We grew into them.

 

Jack Sharkey writes good farce but his plays are a bit off color/sexual for kids in the audience.

 

You can't go wrong with Harvey and Arsenic and Old Lace.  They are both men heavy. (We've never done either You Can't Take it With You or The Man Who Came to Dinner--too silly and too dated respectively.)  Other men heavy shows are the See How They Run series--set in England so there are accents.  We did them and the big classic musicals eventually.

 

Early on we did some melodramas in a tent for the local fair.  These were one acts but silly fun.

 

Later we did some reviews and finally musicals, some with children and some without.  We now have a director who will work with children so we do more kids shows.  Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, One Foot in Heaven, and I Remember Mama are straight plays that had children and adults and led to some parents getting involved.   A Christmas Carol also has some children.  These have LARGE casts.  We tend to do shows with both kids and adults. 

 

We had (and continue to have) many more women than men so all along we have tried to choose shows that have lots of opportunities for women.

 

We have done some small musicals with both adults and children:  Country Christmas Carol (Dramatic or Dramatists) and Tom Sawyer.

 

We did dinner theatre in the beginning with a local church.  They got the crowd to come to the meal, and we provided the play for so much a person. They also paid for the performance space, advertising, and royalty. We also had them help with the set building at load in and with strike.  Our risk was low.   We didn't make much money, but performing has always been our goal rather than making money.

 

My story about working with another local group in dinner theatre is that when I proposed it to a group--rural fire fighters whose most recent fund raising activity--a garage sale--had made $100.  They agreed to work with us, but one of the guys asked if he could just come to the meal and skip the play if he paid full price for his ticket!  (He had never been to live theatre obviously and was sure he wouldn't like it.)  The happy ending is that he later became one of our biggest supporters.  We worked with the group for several years, and we both made good money each time.

 

Enjoy the ride.  If you make some missteps, just learn from them.