Large-Cast Comedies for Professional Theatre
A selection of large-cast comedy plays by Jean-Pierre Martinez for professional theatre companies, repertory theatres, resident ensembles and large-stage productions.
Ensemble Plays for Repertory Theatres, Resident Companies and Large Stages
A large cast should be more than a practical requirement. It can become a theatrical resource in itself.
Jean-Pierre Martinez’s ensemble comedies are designed to give a substantial group of performers a genuine collective presence on stage, with strongly differentiated characters, intersecting storylines and situations in which the dynamics of the group become an essential part of the comedy.
This selection is particularly intended for professional ensembles, repertory theatres, resident companies, artistic directors and theatre directors looking for plays capable of bringing a larger company together around a single production.
The works range from seven-character ensemble pieces to comedies for seventeen performers. Many offer flexible male/female casting, alternative cast sizes or possibilities for doubling roles.
They also cover very different theatrical worlds: backstage farce, political satire, black comedy, crime comedy, parody and large-scale popular comedy.
7 to 17 performers · Ensemble acting · Flexible casting · Strong theatrical worlds · English scripts available
Why Produce a Large-Cast Comedy?
A larger ensemble offers possibilities that a small-cast production cannot.
It allows a theatre to bring together different generations and acting styles, to create a genuine collective dynamic and to give the stage the energy of a whole social world rather than that of a single confrontation.
For a resident company or repertory theatre, a large-cast comedy can also make full use of an existing ensemble, while providing actors with distinctive roles rather than reducing part of the company to secondary appearances.
The plays selected here therefore combine numerous substantial characters with strong situations and clearly defined theatrical universes. Their casting flexibility also allows productions to adapt the material to the particular composition of a company.
Several have already demonstrated their potential in professional or international productions; others offer ambitious material for new ensemble creations.
Theatre, Parody and the Art of Performance
The theatre itself can become a source of comedy.
Actors, directors, authors, audiences, rehearsals and theatrical conventions provide an inexhaustible material for farce — but also a way of exploring what it means to perform, to create fiction and to keep a theatre alive.
The Performance is not cancelled
8 characters · Highly flexible casting · Meta-theatre and ensemble comedy
A struggling theatre company is about to perform a play about the final hours of Molière’s life. Nothing is ready. Problems multiply. Then the box-office takings disappear. Should the company cancel the performance and perhaps condemn the theatre to bankruptcy — or go on stage whatever happens?
Production strengths
Eight performers form a genuine theatrical company on stage, with relationships and conflicts that develop both as characters and as theatre professionals. The play combines backstage comedy, theatrical farce and a more serious reflection on the fragility of live theatre. Most roles can be played by either men or women, offering considerable freedom to a resident ensemble.
The play has been produced in France, Argentina, Turkey and Ukraine. The Ukrainian production by Theatre Coryphaei has also been presented internationally.
Discover The Performance is not cancelled →
Backstage Comedy
10 to 13 performers · Most roles gender-flexible · Theatrical farce
Just before the curtain rises on a premiere, the actors are going through one final rehearsal.
An unexpected incident threatens to prevent the performance from starting — and the boundaries between the play being rehearsed, the theatre company and reality itself become increasingly unstable.
Production strengths
Backstage Comedy turns the entire theatrical ecosystem into material for farce: actors, director, playwright, critic, spectators, police and the production itself.
With 10 to 13 performers and opportunities for doubling, the play can be adapted to the size and composition of a professional company while preserving the sense of a busy theatrical world.
The mise en abyme allows the production to play freely with different acting styles, from deliberately overplayed rehearsal scenes to increasingly absurd backstage reality.
Just like a Christmas movie…
9 to 11 performers · Parody and romantic ensemble comedy
Kimberley has inherited her grandmother’s famous cookie recipe and is about to open a tearoom on Christmas Eve. Naturally, an unscrupulous property developer threatens everything she has built. Naturally, love is waiting around the corner. And naturally, Christmas will solve everything. Or almost everything.
Production strengths
The play takes the highly recognisable codes of the Christmas television movie and turns them into a large-scale theatrical parody, while still allowing the audience to enjoy the pleasures of the genre itself.
Its 11 characters — playable by 9 to 11 performers through doubling — create a colourful ensemble of heroine, best friend, rival, prospective lovers, parents, developer, police officers and other indispensable ingredients of the perfect Christmas story. For theatres looking for a seasonal production, it offers a festive comedy with a strong visual identity and numerous roles.
Power, Society and Collective Satire
A large cast is particularly effective when the stage represents an entire society in miniature.
Politicians, financiers, villagers, officials and outsiders confront one another in these ensemble comedies where collective behaviour becomes both the subject and the source of the humour.
Check to the Kings
8 characters · Highly flexible casting · Political satire
Politics can resemble a chess game in which morality matters less than strategy. Kings, queens and those waiting to replace them are prepared to sacrifice as many pawns as necessary in order to conquer — or retain — power.
Production strengths
The eight characters form a political microcosm in which alliances, betrayals and reversals constantly reshape the balance of power.
The deliberately timeless setting gives directors considerable freedom in terms of costumes, scenography and theatrical style, from contemporary political satire to almost Shakespearean grotesque.
The play has been staged internationally, including a production in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, directed by Paul Zoungrana.
Save Our Savings
7 characters · Flexible casting · Political and social satire
Six mysterious passengers are stranded on an island because of a ferry strike. All have urgent reasons to return to the mainland. Their only option is to board a fishing boat operated by an improvised smuggler. The crossing will cost considerably more than expected.
Production strengths
A maritime adventure becomes an ensemble satire of finance, political power, tax havens, privilege and social inequality. The seven characters represent different positions within the same economic and political system. Once trapped together on a small boat, hierarchies begin to shift and the apparently powerful discover how fragile their status really is.
The closed-space situation creates a strong collective dynamic while requiring only seven performers, with several roles adaptable by gender. The play was first produced in Belgium.
The Worst Village in England
9 or 10 performers · Gender-flexible casting · Popular social comedy
The last inhabitants of a dying village, abandoned by God and bypassed by the motorway, decide they need an attraction capable of putting their community back on the map. Unfortunately, transforming the worst village in England into a major tourist destination proves more difficult than expected.
Production strengths
The village becomes a collective protagonist. Rather than centring the action on one hero, the play creates a gallery of inhabitants whose competing ambitions, eccentricities and desperate ideas gradually build the comedy.
The 9- or 10-person cast can be composed freely of male and female performers, making the piece particularly adaptable to an existing ensemble.
It offers directors the opportunity to create a very identifiable community and a visually distinctive theatrical world.
Discover The Worst Village in England →
Crime, Death and Ensemble Farce
Murder, funerals, hospitals and coffins might not seem like obvious material for popular comedy.
In these plays, however, death becomes the starting point for large ensemble farces in which the multiplication of characters also multiplies misunderstandings, suspects, secrets and possible disasters.
Music does not always soothe the savage beasts
14 to 17 performers · Flexible male/female configurations · Crime farce
Mr and Mrs Camembert have recently bought a dilapidated château and invited the local elite to a dinner concert in the hope of gaining admission to the highly exclusive Philanthropic Club. Then the pianist’s head is discovered floating in the swimming pool. And they have barely finished the appetisers.
Production strengths
With 14 to 17 performers, this is one of the largest ensemble comedies in the repertoire. Aristocrats, social climbers, servants, musicians, policemen and assorted members of local high society create an increasingly chaotic social gathering in which class satire and murder mystery feed a broad theatrical farce.
The range of casting configurations — from predominantly male to predominantly female — makes the play unusually adaptable for such a large ensemble.
It is particularly suited to a company looking for a genuine large-stage comedy with a strong visual world and numerous distinctive roles.
Discover Music does not always soothe the savage beasts →
White Coats, Dark Humour
10 to 13 performers · Extremely flexible casting · Crime comedy and black humour
The hospital was almost perfect. The crime too. A suspicious death turns an apparently respectable medical establishment into the setting for a darkly comic investigation.
Production strengths
Patients, nurses, doctors, visitors and police officers provide a broad gallery of comic characters, while the detective structure gives the ensemble a strong narrative framework.
Most roles can be played by either men or women, and some characters can be doubled, allowing productions to use between 10 and 13 performers with an unusually wide range of gender configurations. The hospital setting also offers considerable scope for ensemble movement, visual comedy and stylised staging.
Discover White Coats, Dark Humour →
The Jackpot
7 to 10 performers in the English version · Flexible casting · Popular ensemble comedy
Following an accident involving a hearse, a coffin arrives in a neighbourhood café. Inside is something much more valuable than a corpse: a winning lottery ticket. Suddenly everyone has a very good reason to claim it.
Production strengths
The café provides a classic setting for ensemble comedy: a place where very different characters naturally meet, observe one another and interfere in each other’s lives.
The arrival of the coffin transforms this familiar social space into an increasingly frantic battle over money, luck and ownership.
The English version can be played by 7 to 10 actors, with numerous male/female configurations. The original French play exists in even larger versions, up to 17 characters, and has enjoyed very extensive production history in France, Spain and Brazil.
False exit
8 to 10 performers · Flexible casting · Funeral farce
Jack has organised a gathering around the ashes of his recently deceased grandfather. Then, because of an error by the funeral company, Jack discovers that his own name has appeared in the obituary. Explaining that he is not dead turns out to be considerably more complicated than expected.
Production strengths
The premise creates an ideal ensemble mechanism: family, friends and funeral professionals enter a situation in which everyone believes they understand what has happened, while no one possesses the complete story.
The piece can be performed by 8, 9 or 10 actors with several gender configurations, making it particularly adaptable to a professional ensemble. It was first produced in Savièse, Switzerland, in 2015.
Strong Ensemble Worlds
Some large-cast plays derive their strength not from a single plot mechanism but from the creation of a complete theatrical community.
An assisted living facility and a convent provide two very different worlds in which every character contributes to the identity and rhythm of the whole production.
Welcome aboard!
8 characters · Adaptable to 9 or 10 · Mostly gender-flexible · Black ensemble comedy
Life is a cruise on the Titanic. Some travel first class, others below deck, but everyone eventually reaches the same destination. In an assisted living facility, a group of residents decide that growing old does not necessarily mean giving up on life.
Production strengths
The comedy depends on the interaction of a true ensemble of strongly individualised characters, rather than on a single leading role. It offers substantial material for experienced performers and particularly interesting opportunities for a company bringing together actors from different generations. Most roles are gender-flexible, and versions for 9 or 10 performers are also possible.
Its professional potential was demonstrated by the 2024 production at the Aleko Konstantinov Satirical Theatre in Sofia, directed by Ivaylo Nenov and performed by members of the theatre’s resident company. Contemporary Bulgarian reviews particularly emphasised the strength of the ensemble acting.
Miracle at Saint Mary Juana Abbey
10 to 14 performers · Multiple cast configurations · Popular ensemble comedy
The gift shop of Saint Mary Juana Abbey finances the nuns’ charitable work. Unfortunately, sales of the convent’s once-famous Holy Elixir are collapsing. Until one entrepreneurial sister decides to improve the recipe with a mysterious herb. Suddenly, miracles begin to happen.
Production strengths
The convent creates an instantly recognisable collective world, populated by nuns with contrasting personalities, visitors and outsiders whose interests collide as the miraculous product becomes increasingly successful.
With versions for 10 to 14 performers, the play offers a substantial ensemble production while allowing the cast size to be adapted to the resources of the company.
The strong setting, broad comic premise and large number of roles make it particularly suitable for theatres looking for a colourful popular production with a clear visual identity.
Ensemble Theatre as a Production Choice
A large cast is sometimes seen primarily as a financial constraint.
For a theatre with a resident company, however, it can be precisely the opposite: an artistic resource already available.
Ensemble theatre allows a production to draw on the personality, age, experience and comic style of many performers. It creates relationships on stage that cannot exist in a two- or three-character play: factions, crowds, institutions, families, communities and entire miniature societies.
The comedies selected here were written with that collective energy in mind.
Their flexible casting structures also allow directors to adapt them to the particular strengths of an existing company rather than forcing the company to conform to a rigid distribution.
Read Before You Produce
The complete English scripts of Jean-Pierre Martinez’s plays can be read and downloaded free of charge for evaluation.
Many of these large-cast works also exist in Spanish, Portuguese and other languages, and several offer alternative cast sizes or gender configurations.
Explore Other Professional Selections
Proven Comedies
Audience-oriented comedies whose theatrical effectiveness has been demonstrated through productions in different countries and cultural contexts.
Contemporary Issues
Politics, money, misinformation, surveillance, climate change and democracy explored through satire, black comedy, absurdity and dystopia.
Performance Rights and Professional Productions
Jean-Pierre Martinez is a member of the SACD – Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques.
Professional performances require prior authorisation and payment of performance rights. Depending on the country, rights are administered by SACD or through its partner organisations and representatives.
For a professional production, you can also contact us regarding:
- alternative cast sizes and configurations;
- available translations;
- previous professional productions;
- territorial rights;
- or any other question before applying for performance authorisation.