The Dancing Princesses

Length: about 15 minutes. In rhyming couplets, with opportunities for audience participation.

Available from Lazy Bees Scripts

The original Grimm's story is of Twelve Dancing Princesses or The Shoes That Were Danced To Pieces (depending on which translation you have); but this version allows for any number of Princesses from two upwards, though at least four is preferable.

The King wonders why his daughters' shoes are worn to shreds every night. Replacing them is costing half the national budget. Where do these girls go and what do they do? Marriage to one chosen Princess is the prize for the man who can solve the mystery. Sixty-nine Princes have already tried – and paid for their failure with their lives.

An old woman helps a wounded soldier to solve the mystery, warning him how to avoid being drugged, and supplying him with an invisible cloak.

Will he succeed? Which Princess will he choose? Or will it all end in some quite different way?

Script Extract:

King: But I buy you shoes every day of the season.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason.

Princess Bossanova: Wrecking one's shoes is not a crime.

There may be no reason – but there is a rhyme.

King: Yes, but here's the point. You just can't fudge it.

Your feet cost me half of the national budget!

Characters: seven speaking parts with a variable number of non-speaking parts

Narrator; Hugh (the wounded soldier); Old Woman; King; Princess Bossanova; Princess Cha-Cha, Princess Jitterbug

More princesses (any number up to twelve including the three listed)

Princes (equal in number to the princesses)

This script has been performed in the United Kingdom, USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Jamaica, Thailand and Turkey.