This Play on the Wild Wild West, written by Sue Russell, is a mixture of light-hearted and serious material. Along with a light-hearted portrayal of “cowboys and ‘injuns’” there is a serious consideration of the suffering of the indigenous populations, at the hands of the settlers; and further exploration of the theme of ‘respect’ when considering the plight of Native Americans through from the initial impact of Europeans in their midst to recent/contemporary times.
This is one of a set of class plays written on the American Social Studies curriculum. They are written to entertain and educate; and of prime importance to busy teachers, they are easy to do - written ‘by a teacher for teachers’ to minimize the time and stress ingredients which can be so off-putting when considering ‘a performance’. Written for a cast of 30 (this number can easily be adapted to a smaller class size), each class play comes with a seating plan – included so that the children file in, in the correct order, and speak in the correct order!
A suggested selection of rock songs are included which, in my experience, really ‘lift’ the performance, and are chosen to appeal to children and adults alike!
I have written plays for other subjects such as science, geography, PSHCE (Citizenship Skills) and one-offs like Valentines and St. Patrick's Day. These can all be viewed on my website www.plays-r-ussell.com which has a complete listing of my material under UK and USA catalogs.
In addition to these 'large cast, plays for performance' I have produced a set of Group Readers which are for groups of 6 children, written in sets of 5, complete with quizzes. These are a great in-classroom resource, for guided reading or 'mini performances'. Again, these can also be seen on my website www.plays-r-ussell.com

Wild Wild West Class Play (incl. Plight of Native Americans) by Sue Russell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.