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The school play is, in theory, a wonderful opportunity for pupils to experience first-hand the skill of the classic dramatist. In practice, however, it's a golden opportunity to get your own back on the boring old bloke for writing the thing in the first place!
— Peter Corey, Coping with School
25 kids in food suits, forgetting their lines. I'll definitely be at work.
Amateur theater productions are the most realistic excuse to put characters in unusual costumes. If the play has any romantic overtones at all, the most important casting will not be arbitrary. For that matter, even if the play has no romantic overtones, the most important casting will not be arbitrary. Usually either people will get parts in the play that match their roles in the larger show, or this will be inverted and they will get parts that are horrible matches. The most hapless character will likely play an inanimate object.
In High School sitcoms, the play is usually Romeo and Juliet, with the main characters cast in the lead roles. This is especially likely in a She Is Not My Girlfriend situation. The balcony scene is always shown, and the specific line "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" is always uttered. ( Expect the writers not to realize that "wherefore" means "why" and not "where".) Once in a while, the main plot is a less-lethal parallel of the tragedy of the play. All this is probably because the general public knows only a handful of actual plays. Also, William Shakespeare plays are public domain and therefore are free to show. The plot of these episodes usually revolves around the characters struggling to memorize their lines, trying to manoeuvre themselves into the lead roles, complaining/boasting about the roles they did get, or working up the confidence for a kiss scene.
A School Play featuring younger children will most likely be the Nativity. Common tropes include a central character being cast as a Bit Character like " third shepherd" or, worse, an inanimate object, and resent the fact that the Alpha Bitch and The Ace got the starring roles as always. The Cheerful Child may get a solo speech at some point which will leave the audience overcome with Cuteness Overload. Parents may have to make the costume themselves, so expect shoddy Rummage Sale Rejects if Mom does it and mortifying awfulness if it's left up to Dad. The kids will stumble through their lines awkwardly, and at least one will either (a) cry, (b) wet themselves, or (c) throw up.
Often a play (school or otherwise) will be such a disaster that the audience, usually including an important patron or theatre critic, will mistake it for a comedy, resulting in an unexpected success. If the badness is intentional in an attempt to get (back) at something, you may end up with Springtime for Hitler.
An episode of a show with a school play often will contain behavior on the part of the actors that will be particularly aggravating to actual high school performers, or at least those in drama club. Actions such as spontaneously altering lines and blocking, breaking character on stage, and totally abandoning the script will be treated as humorous and acceptable. In reality, any decent director would have the heads of an actor who intentionally did this since it is likely to throw off the rest of the cast and cause great damage to the performance... of course, the joke is that they don't have a decent director.
Also of note is the exceptional budgets and production values that high school plays are often shown to have, usually complete with wired flying harnesses, full period costumes, and actual furniture. If a school in real life has any of these (or especially all three), it is very, very rich; very, very talented; or both.
Depending on the genre, look out for All Part of the Show.
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Examples
Anime & Manga
- Rozen Maiden and A Little Snow Fairy Sugar both cast their most boisterous girls as witches.
- Ranma ½ also did a version of Romeo and Juliet with Akane as Juliet and just about every teenaged male in the cast (plus Dirty Old Man Panty Thief Happosai) battling it out on-stage to be Romeo.
- ... Until Ranma gave up and went out as an alternate Juliet. Akane (who had always played Romeo in grade-school and desperately wanted to be Juliet) was not amused.
- In K-On!, the girly Mio plays Romeo and the tomboyish Ritsu plays Juliett (and Yui plays Tree G). That's Playing Against Type.
- Love Hina did a very odd variation of Journey to the West.
- The characters of Mahoraba are "actors" in the children's story written by Shiratori Ryuushi.
- Shikimori Kazuki has to take over the role of the male lead in a school play in Maburaho after the special effects become a little too realistic. The female lead is his childhood friend with a crush on him.
- In Maria-sama ga Miteru, Lillian Jogakuen (Lillian Girls' School) and Hanadera Gakuen (Hanadera Academy, an all-boys school) put on a joint production of "Cinderella".
- Season 4 of the anime has another one, again put on by both schools, though this time around it's Torikaebaya Monogatari with Yumi and Yuki in the lead roles. Hilarity Ensues
- Episode 29 of Keroro Gunsou features Natsumi and Koyuki starring in a production of Peter Pan. When Natsumi gets stage fright, it gives Keroro a chance to curry her favor by helping out (and an excuse to dress like Chigusa Tsukikage from Glass Mask).
- Episode 3 of FLCL revolves around Naota getting dragged into playing the title character in his school's production of "Puss in Boots".
- Could be considered a subversion since the class president rigged the votes for casting or something to that effect
- Cardcaptor Sakura had Sakura's brother Touya's class perform in "Cinderella"... with the genders of actors and characters reversed, and a few other character tweaks. Touya was Cinderella, while his best friend Yukito was a "magical can of mackerel". Sakura's class performed Sleeping Beauty with supposedly random casting that included a fair amount of gender reversing. However, in the second movie, Sakura's class actually kept genders and actors concurrent.
- Futari wa Pretty Cure did Romeo and Juliet with the main characters. At least, that's what the play started out as — between the director's edits and an attack by a villain during the performance, the end result was almost completely unrecognizable.
- Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch did, fittingly, "The Little Mermaid".
- In Fruits Basket, "Prince Yuki"'s Instant Fanclub takes control of the casting of their school's production of "Cinderella" and insist on casting Tohru as the evil stepsister and Yuki as the Fairy Godmother, in a jealous effort to make Tohru look bad and to prevent the two of them from being cast together as Cinderella and the Prince. Those roles go instead to disinterested Goth-girl Hanajima and violent tough-guy Kyo, respectively; needless to say, the production quickly goes wildly (and hilariously) off the rails.
- School Rumble had the characters act in an original play although as most things in a comedy anime, not everything went as planned.
- Kareshi Kanojo No Jijou featured the production of a play based off a script written by one of the characters entitled "Steel Snow". The actual play itself is found only in the manga as the anime ended before these chapters could be animated. Quite the pity that the odds of a sequel made by Gainax for these chapters has about as much probability as the Tenchuu arc of Rurouni Kenshin being animated. In both cases, they are one of the highlights of the manga.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: the Shadow Play Girls, who serve as the Greek Chorus of the series, put on a play that provides some vital and disturbing exposition.
- In episode 56 of Sailor Moon, the girls volunteer to participate in a "Snow White" play alongside Mamoru, who is playing the prince. Each one of them, including the villain An, ends up wanting the title role for herself. Hilarity Ensues.
- InuYasha plays the trope for all the comedy it's worth as part of the School Festival episode. Kagome and her clueless admirer Hojo-kun are cast as romantic leads... but Inu-Yasha, not grasping that it's a play, takes exception, forcing Kagome to ad-lib wildly. The whole thing gets thoroughly derailed when a monster shows up to get blown away (along with part of the school) by Inu-Yasha's BFS. The audience, naturally, assumes it's all special effects.
- The school play in the Blue Drop anime, featuring Hagino and Mari as the leads and written by Michi, seems to be so important to Hagino that she pretty much endangers the fate of the world as we know to it to perform it. You'd think that the rebellious commander of an alien battleship has more important things on her mind.
- This trope is rather pivotal in Figure17, the play features Tsubasa and Hikaru as the leads, thus providing the shy Tsubasa with a way of expressing her feelings. Made even more poignant since Shou, Tsubasa's love interest, is the author of the script and dies shortly after it is enacted.
- The School Play in Figure17 is also a little special as anime school plays go. One, because it was an original work, and two, because we get to see the whole play - albeit between performance and rehearsal, rather than all in one go. .. Plus we get to see Tsubasa playing a Dark Magical Girl, sort of.
- Strawberry Panic includes a theatrical adaptation of the opera Carmen.
- Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru features the all-girls' school putting on Romeo and Juliet, with Mizuho (campus idol and secret male) as Romeo and Takako (tsundere and student council president) as Juliet. A second play, an original fantasy, is staged at the same festival, starring younger girl Kana as the spirit of a cherry tree.
- The first play is fitting, because Mizuho's and Takako's families are rivals.
- D.N.Angel had the characters putting on a play based on an fairytale unique to that world.
- Interesting in that it was a love story... but all the actors were the male students, so a nice source of Ho Yay for Daisuke and Satoshi.
- Doki Doki School Hours has Mika's students put on a version of "Snow White", with gay Kudo playing the lead and his oblivious crush Suetake as the prince. It goes surprisingly well, despite the fact that Cross Dresser Seki is very unhappy that he couldn't play the lead role.
- The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya contains a minor subversion in its School Festival episode. The play in question has almost no effect on the plot of the episode, and is actually Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, rather than the ubiquitous Romeo and Juliet.
- Knowing the play, this troper thinks the choice is to help highlight some of the show's themes.
- A big part of Hitohira.
- In Urusei Yatsura chapter 57, the play is Sugata Sanshirō at first, but then Ataru, in the role of Sun Wukong, intrudes into the play, and it becomes a Massive Multiplayer Crossover with Journey to the West.
- Maison Ikkoku had a version of this, where the Puppet Club put on a puppet play for preschoolers, with everything going perfectly. Until Godai's love interest was drafted into helping out, and squeezed into the booth with him, prompting him to bungle all his lines.
- The kids liked it even more after that.
- Glass Mask unsurprisingly has several of these, although all are variations that don't quite match the trope. The first instance sparks Maya's acting dreams, and involves her playing a comic role tragically without changing the script at all. It is still a big hit with the audience, although the teacher in charge was not happy.
- Aoi Hana revolves around several plays, which function as a linking pin between two all-girl high schools, since drama club members scout actors at each other's institutes.
- Here Is Greenwood had a School Festival episode where Shun participates in a play we don't get get to see except for a tiny snippet at the very end of the episode. The play? The Castle Of Cagliostro, with Shun as Clarisse.
- The first season of Clannad has the main characters helping Nagisa revive the Drama Club. At the end of the season, Nagisa does a one-woman play with the rest of the cast as her tech crew. The play itself is a connection to a set of scenes throughout the season that seemed to not have anything to do with the plot at all...
- Pita-Ten has Kotarou's class perform Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
 , with Takashi and Mitarai fighting each other for the role of Kaguya-hime.
- In Wandering Son for the School Festival's the protagonists did school plays twice in a row. Once was a genderbent version of Romeo and Juliet and the other was based on a previous manga by the mangaka, where everyone switched sexes suddenly.
- Marginal Prince has the main characters perform a play about the legend that lays behind the founder of their school for the island's cultural festival. Of course, since it's an all-boys school, female roles are played by the guys as well (in this case Mikhail, Henri eventually dropped out of his princess role). However, the play itself isn't really in focus anymore at some point when Joshua has an BSOD on stage and the attempted assassination of him begins to surface.
- In Fairy Tail, Team Natsu plays a stage play which doesn't even have a plot. The audience is first confused, but then they love the play when when Lucy's dress is burnt by Natsu and finally cut in pieces by Erza.
Comics
Fan Fic
- Done way too many times to count, usually as an excuse to hook up the author's favorite pairing, to the point that it's a huge fanfiction cliche.
Film
Literature
- In his commentary for The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Albus Dumbledore mentions an occasion when Hogwarts tried to put on a school play — an adaptation of the wizarding fairytale, The Fountain of Fair Fortune. The play ended badly, resulting in a ban on any future productions.
- In the teen novel My Life and Other Catastrophes, the school play is busted by the police so they can arrest the younger brother of a local drug dealer, who is in the play. A critic in the audience mistakes it for interactive theater.
- A production of The Wizard of Oz is chronicled in one stretch of Diary of a Wimpy Kid (see Playing A Tree); a talent show appears in the first sequel.
- The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is built on this trope. The notorious Herdmans, six troublemaking kids who have just started attending Sunday school, are the only volunteers to play Mary, Joseph, the Three Wise Men, and the Angel of the Lord (none of the other kids want to risk their wrath by volunteering themselves) in the church's Nativity pageant. They don't actually know the Nativity story, and that's the start of the trouble. However, owing in part to their disadvantaged lifestyles coloring how they approach their roles, they wind up unintentionally making the actual show more meaningful than anyone had reason to suspect.
- In The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Adrian helps organise his school's (very political and non-traditional) nativity play, and stars as Joseph opposite Pandora as Mary.
Driving home in the car my father said, "That was the funniest Nativity play I have ever seen. Whose idea was it to turn it into a comedy?"
I didn't reply. It wasn't a comedy.
- In Starring the Baby-sitters Club! students from SES, SMS, SHS and Stoneybrook Academy put on a musical extravaganza, Peter Pan.
- In Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's The Agony of Alice, Alice plays a sentient bush who grabs the heroine, played by The Rival, Pamela. When Pamela steps on Alice's foot (accidentally or not), Alice grabs Pamela's hair, prompting an unscripted outburst to mutual embarrassment. Arguably worse for Alice, who can't leave the stage.
- The Berenstain Bears Get Stage Fright has Sister Bear dealing with the titular problem when she's cast as the heroine of "Rumpelstiltskin"; specifically, she's afraid she'll forget her lines. This book was adapted into an episode of the Saturday Morning Cartoon in The Eighties.
Live Action TV
Video Games
- In the hentai game X-Change 2, Takuya is offered a role in a school play written by the drama club president, Miyuki. The play's topic, which is about hermaphrodites falling in love, is unpopular with the other club members, who threaten to quit unless Miyuki cancels the play. Takuya convinces Miyuki to stop the play, as it isn't more important than her friends.
- In Mega Man Star Force there is a school play at one point. Geo Stelar has to play the role as Mega Man in the play, so for his costume he simply transforms into Mega Man.
- A school play being played in the School Festival is a staple of the Tokimeki Memorial series, usually courtesy of the Drama Club. If you're a member of this Club, you'll get a role in it. And in Tokimeki Memorial 2, in 3rd year where the School Festival activities depend of the classes instead of the Clubs, you can get your class to choose to do a school play (which happens to be the preferred choice of cute boy Takumi, who'll get to play as the princess of the play in sudden replacement of the ill main actress).
- In the Girl's Side games, a role in the school play is always available to the protagonist in the third year, alongside whichever guy she's closest with (even if it's her teacher). The plays are always conveniently thematically appropriate to the relationship the protagonist has with the guy in question.
- Persona has the local Drama Club worry about what play they were going to put on for a School Festival. However, there seems to be a unique school play called the Snow Queen they could do... however, the mask for the title role is an evil one, that calls forth the Night Queen (called Nyx in the orignal Japanese) from her slumber.
Web Comics
- Penny and Aggie: In "The Popsicle War" arc, the students of Belleville High are intermittently shown rehearsing Macbeth. The casting involves both some expected parallels with the strip's characters and some twists. The actual performance isn't shown until the later "Final Curtain, First Kiss" arc, in which the overlapping romantic and career-ambition subplots, involving several of the cast members, have a comically disastrous effect on the closing night's staging. Disastrous, that is, except for Sara, whose sexy performance as Lady Macbeth catches the attention of a Hollywood talent scout and eventually lands her a role in a Reality Show.
- A brief Story Arc in WCI High showed the school production of (what else?) Romeo and Juliet, which heavily parodied as many cliches as possible:
- Juliet is played by a nine-foot-tall reptilian monster (because no one has the guts to tell her no). In the balcony scene, she simply stands behind the scenery and pokes her head through the second-story window. (Oddly, they avoid using the "wherefore art thou" line.)
- Also, while she normally talks in Hulk Speak, she has an amazing talent for Shakespearean dialog. (Doubly subverted when she exclaims, "Me talk pretty one day!")
- Montague and Capulet are dressed as Mario and Luigi. (Capulet has a "C" on his cap, of course, instead of Luigi's "L".)
- Mercutio and Tybalt are played by a budding superhero and his budding arch-nemesis. The villain tries using a real sword, which of course doesn't work.
- In Ozy And Millie, the school puts on "The Story of Caulk." Avery improvises a kiss on Millie, ostensibly to improve the play (he otherwise shows no sign of a crush on her), and she loses her lunch on stage. Unstoppable Rage ensues.
- In UC, all four main characters start the comic by participating in one of these. Though, there are large hints that in this school play not all is as fictional as it seems.
- In a 2013 arc of Roommates the drama department of the St. Jude University wants to do Love Never Dies. The catch is? They have Erik on staff and he is not amused.
Western Animation
- In a memorable example on American Dragon Jake Long, Jake works it out so he'll get to kiss his secretly-admired Rose in Antony And Cleopatra. Their own lives mimic the tragic nature of the play, as they both have secret identities, and are enemies without their own knowledge (although it's made clear to the viewers). Rose, as "The Huntsgirl", injures her leg in battle with Jake, in his reptilian alter-ego form. Rose shows up in a cast, she has to back out of the play, and Jake's (male) friend Spud takes over her role.
- Doug had Doug's auteur sister Judy put on a strange, symbolism-filled version of a traditional play about the founding of the town, despite the attempts of strait-laced vice-principal Mr. Bone to get the ordinary but dull standard version performed.
- Another episode featured a play depicting the love relationship between Leonardo daVinci and Mona Lisa, starring Doug as Leonardo and Patty as Mona. (At the very end, she was replaced by Judy.)
- In yet another episode, wherein Doug bonds with a boy named Todd, who acts out for attention, Todd is a member of Judy's after school kids' drama group. After being taught some restraint by Doug, Todd rejoins the group for their performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest and gives a rousing performance as Prospero, with some stage magic help from Doug.
- For some weird reason, his Prospero is reciting Miranda's dialogue.
- Hey Arnold! has done several school plays: a musical on food in the very first episode, a Thanksgiving pageant in the Thanksgiving special, the seemingly pre-requisite Romeo and Juliet in an episode that was actually titled "School Play", and a musical called "Eugene, Eugene!" in the show's last 15-minute episode.
- Not to mention an episode where Arnold fall asleep during the first act of Carmen, dreaming himself into the opera with himself as the soldier, and his crush Ruth as the titular character. Then Helga falls asleep during the second act, bringing in elements of The Ring Cycle for some zaniness.
- W.I.T.C.H. has the girls required to be on stage at the same time the Big Bad is planning something big, so the girls manage to be in two places at once by creating magical doubles of themselves. Hilarity Ensues when their mentor forgets to warn them that the doubles don't have all their memories. The play itself had heavy Foreshadowing of later episodes.
- Interesting to note that the play went off without a hitch in the original comic.
- Cow and Chicken had a two part "play episode" entitled The Ugliest Weenie, based on a play Cow wrote, and Chicken wanting to get the lead role once he realises the hottest girl in school is the love interest. He ends up the understudy to the lead, and then gains the role when the lead actor gets the measles... only to discover said actor gave the measles to the love interest, and Cow is filling in that role.
- Code Lyoko parodies this trope in its Season 1 episode "Laughing Fit", with the obligatory Romeo and Juliet. Not only is it rather bad, the entire production seems to be managed entirely by Sissi.
- Later on, in Season 3 episode "Temporary Insanity", Cyrano de Bergerac is being played, with Mr. Chardin stating that the only reason they are doing this specific play is that it has also a balcony scene, and they don't want to waste a good stage prop.
- This gives Gosalyn a lot of misery in an episode of Darkwing Duck, since her father is in a bit of a 10-Minute Retirement to be a perfect parent and casts her as the main role, the Sugar Plum Fairy. Not exactly fitting of her own personality...
- In "Romeo Must Wed", an episode of The Proud Family, the students of Willy T. Ribs put on a production of Romeo and Juliet.
- In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, the students perform Macbeth in Space. There was also talk of Hamlet on Ice.
- Recess had the characters put on a Christmas play once which was being broadcasted to the rest of the world and Mikey was meant to be the lead of Santa Claus. The episode centred on him debating with himself and his friends as to whether Santa existed or not and Mikey nearly refusing to play the part in the school play.
- In Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman, the school the Chipmunks attend is putting a production of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (arguably a sort of werewolf story as well). The shy Theodore is tapped to play the lead in hopes that it'll improve his self-confidence, but his performance really starts improving after he is infected with lycanthropy.
- In an episode of South Park, the kids turn a school production of The Miracle Worker into a musical extravaganza in order to make sure they wouldn't be outdone by the preschoolers' Thanksgiving skit.
- Home Movies had Bye Bye Greasy, a parody of the 1950s-set high school theater warhorses Bye Bye Birdie and Grease.
- The Simpsons' episode "I Love Lisa" climaxes with the elementary school pageant Hooray for Presidents' Day, in which Ralph Wiggum and Lisa Simpson play George and Martha Washington — Ralph, whose crush on Lisa was rebuffed, channels his heartache into his performance. Meanwhile, Bart's performance as John Wilkes Booth by way of The Terminator was not well received by Mrs. Hoover (especially once he tried to go after Chester A Arthur after "killing" Lincoln,).
- Springfield Elementary has had many performances, in fact: the original Christmas Episode opened at a Christmas pageant, other episodes have included talent shows (one featuring students, the other faculty), and in "I Love Lisa" we're told of the unsuccessful Fire Drill Follies. ("You opened the show with a fire drill and everyone cleared out!")
- A less orthodox example from The Simpsons has Principal Skinner organize a play in an attempt to convince Mr. Burns to donate money to the underfunded school. Includes several CMOFs such as...
Skinner: Now, who in Springfield will eat the poisoned broth? Oh-ho! It could be anyone, even Mr. Burns!
Burns: This play really speaks to me!
—-
Ralph: Hello, I'm Dr. Stupid. I'm going to take out your liver bones. (decapitates dummy of Burns with saw) Oops, you're dead.
Burns: I never liked that Dr. Stupid.
- The second season of The Spectacular Spider Man includes a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream; lines from the auditions and performance are used to comment on the larger plot.
- Not really the main focus of the episode, but the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" has Filly!Rarity designing costumes for a play. Despite the teacher liking them, she thinks they're horrible...until her horn takes her to a geode that she uses to for some reason put gemstones all over the other costumes, and for some reason the show is a hit. And the play doesn't seem to have any real plot either, it's just a group of foals in food costumes bobbing back and forth to music.
- The Beetlejuice episode "Stage Fright" has Claire Brewster sabotaging Lydia's audition for Miss Shannon's School For Girls' play of "Romeo and Juliet." Beetlejuice gets even by taking over Claire's body and making a shambles out of the production. Oddly enough, the school's main backer loved it.
- Iron Man Armored Adventures featured an episode where Tony really began to blow off school in his determination to take his dad's company back. When he's actually convinced to take his schoolwork seriously, he has to catch up and prepare for a performance of "Hamlet" for drama class.
Tony: So what's it about?
Pepper: It's about a guy... who's pulled in a million different directions... [realizing what she's saying] while trying to avenge his dead father.
Tony: Heh, no, really, what's it about? [beat] ...Are you kidding me?!
- The Emperor's New School: Back when Yzma was a student at the nameless academy (Kuzco Academy existed decades before somebody named it), Yzma felt bad that her rival got the main roles and she was a tree.
- Pepper Ann does Romeo and Juliet with Pepper Ann naturally gunning for the role of Juliet. She doesn't get it and ends up cast as The Nurse instead. However at the last minute the actress playing Juliet falls ill and Pepper Ann replaces her...except she has to wear her Juliet costume over the nurse's fat suit.
- As Told by Ginger featured two. One was a plot device for a rivalry between Ginger and Dodie where Dodie is desperate to get the lead role as a boy she likes is playing the other lead. Ginger ends up getting the part (when she didn't even want to audition) and the boy falls for her instead.
- The Halloween Episode featured an Expy of The Crucible called "I Spy A Witch". Miranda frames Ginger for defacing the school statue and replaces her as the lead. When Ginger finds out the truth, she dons a costume and sneaks on stage during the play to out Miranda. This then ends up changing the ending of the play so that the lead is found guilty to be a witch after all and burned at the stake.
- Sabrina: The Animated Series has...you guessed it...Romeo and Juliet though this is just a sub-plot. Sabrina and Gem intend to get the part of Juliet and must have properly researched the meaning of the role for their callbacks. This leads to Hilda and Zelda conjuring up the actual Romeo to help her study...Hilarity Ensues. Sabrina learns An Aesop and bags the role though when the play is actually shown, it isn't the balcony scene.
- Sabrina's Secret Life recycled this storyline only this time it was A Midsummer Night's Dream and Sabrina and Cassandra were gunning for the role of Titania the fairy queen. Sabrina doesn't get the part and is made producer instead.
- The Animated Adaptation of Franklin had three of these. The first came in the first season story "Franklin's School Play" (based on the book by the same name) and featured The Nutcracker as the play. In the story, Franklin was the Nutcracker Prince, but had to overcome stage fright to perform the role. The second play was in the third season story "Franklin's Starring Role," a performance of Sleeping Beauty. In this story, Franklin doesn't have stage fright anymore, and is upset when he is assigned the role of stage manager, thinking his teacher Mr. Owl doesn't think he's good enough to have a part. In the end, he learns that Mr. Owl gave him the role of stage manager because he felt he was responsible and he wanted to give others a chance to play roles after Franklin had the lead in the last play. The final play was in the film Franklin and the Green Knight, a performance of a fairy tale picture book popular in Woodland: The Quest of the Green Knight. Franklin again takes the lead role this time, as the Green Knight, though the film is also about him thinking that he could truly become the Green Knight and bring Spring, as the Green Knight in the story does.
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