I am teaching a 1 week camp (9am - 12 noon) which ends with a performance on Friday night.  I will have approximately 20 children with usually no more than 3-5 boys.  Last year I wrote a short musical and the year before we performed short skits/reader's theatre and dance numbers to open and close the show. 
This year I'd really like to find a 15 - 25 minute show appropriate for this age group (and don't forget, they only have a week to learn it).  I've already spent $$ ordering 2 children's musicals  but they were awful!  I can't afford to make another mistake.
I'd be thankful for any information or direction given.
kinni

I hope you will post the information on this board when you find it, Playwright.  There are probably a lot of children's programs that would like to use that script!  We do a one day blitz on a Saturday that your play might work for. 

Very touching story, by the way, about your kids and their camp.

I too run a summer acting camp, and a middle school drama club. For the ms we write our own recitals - we have more time.  I give the kids a subject - and they go with it - we add in familiar songs I download onto a practice cd for each student, and a teach little basic dance and it becomes a mini muscial - last year we learned drama basics - monologues, auditioning tech, improv, - etc. the recital was a 'time travel' piece - where they went to different 'auditions' and theaters - 'Drew Carey improv sounstage",(displayed their improv skills using the audience) "musicals in progress etc."(used scene studies from Big River, MacBeth, West Side Story) and more. It allowed us to show the parents what we learned & at the same time made it entertaining - this year we tackled a deeper subject, 'what it's like to be in middle school" again, they wrote it themselves - but touched personal and true subjects like divorce, anorexia, social status, fitting in, etc. through a 'week in the life' kind of production and displayed this all through monologues and dialogues pieced together with true to life characters culminating at the school dance the cahracters were dealing with these and more subjects throughout the script - we added in songs from Disney's HS musical and other familiar show songs and oldies - it was our best show yet - each of our recitals including our summer camp showcase are no longer than 1hour - my advice is to do something like this - it's cheap and the kids/parents love it - add in slides from the camp to add to the display! Or perhaps just take from a few scenes from exisiting children's shows and tie them together with a group song or script they or you write displaying what they have learned - parents like to SEE where their money went. Good luck!

 Kinni,

     Here's the info from my friend and his email.  Read his message below.  

Sondra

 Michael- dont_brush_your_teeth@hotmail.com
    

Hi Sondra, i can try and dig up the script. Although i wouldn't necessarily recommend that they use it. What we did was on the first day of our 1 week camp at the end of the day for the last hour the whole group did a brainstorming session, and we got the themes for three scenes putting the campers in the group they wanted to
be a part of. Underwater scene, haunted scene, space scene. Then that night we wrote out the scenes... truthfully though, its really not easy writing a script that is short concise, funny and presentable for a group of children with various degrees autism . After writing the scripts for the Notre Dame Special needs play the last two years, i think i have found a nice balance. So i would suggest that they perhaps use the script we wrote as a guideline, and write their own based on the needs and interests of their group.   I would also be quite glad to offer any other advice from experience i gained during the drama camp, including all sorts of activity and game ideas. I'd be quite glad to help. If any such person is looking for assistance, please feel free to refer them to me, and to give them my email address so they can ask me any specific questions, that might make things easier.

Michael