Also check out Moby Dick! The Musical - it's the story of an all-girls school putting on a production of Moby Dick to save their school, and only requires a few men for very specific roles.

Have you considered THE BOYFRIEND, WORKING, SEUSSICAL (with a female Cat in the hat), or THE PAJAMA GAME?

MTI might not have "Smile", but we do license "Smike"...call for details!

Marsha: I've never heard of Smile. Who wrote it and does MTI have the rights? How big was your cast?

Smile the musical was based on the movie of the same name, music and lyrics by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Ashman. It was a flop on Broadway (and there was never a Broadway cast recording) but it's really more geared toward high school and community theater, IMO. Samuel French has the rights, not MTI. Our cast was about 25 or so. You need enough girls to play the beauty pageant contestants, the emcee needs to be a man/boy, there's the couple who runs the pageant and their son, and other characters which can be either male or female. It's rather dated towards the 80's as well, so we changed some of the lyrics to make it current.

We also have the same issue and last year we did Smile. Little known show but it's ideal for high school aged performers, as well as female strong cast.

Bill, we did Godspell two years ago and we did the same - brought it to modern day. It was very easy to do. I also updated a few of the pop culture references (though not all), to appeal to a wider audience. But Godspell is very easy to manipulate when it comes to males/females.

This is always the struggle at our school. Each year we have to be overly creative to even put on a show because of the lack of males trying out. It's really unfortunate, because we have so many incredible females that we end up having to cut some good people. And there is such an imbalance between the males and females in terms of skill that the guys are often blow out of the water by the girls. The shows are always fantastic, but just once I'd like to have a show that suited the number of good guys we had! Unfortunately, that would probably have to be one about nuns or something since we average 3-5 decent guys and 20 great girls haha. I found that Fame, Godspell and Footloose only required a few REALLY good guys, and that you can get away with some not-so-strong guys in some other roles, or changing them to girls.

Matt, I would luv to chat with you in detail regarding you did with GODSPELL. I work at a private catholic high school that has a hugh following and the musical is THE event of the school. Do you have pictures/time available to chat?

Try Back to the 80's--it was fun, more of an ensemble cast with lots of ways to maniupulate who sings what songs.

Also, some shows work just fine in school settings with a woman playing a male character. We've had many female Music Men and Willy Wonkas. As long as you don't change the gender of the character and/or any lines, (IE - It's still Mr. Willy Wonka - a male character, just played by a female actor) it often works very well.

I was looking at Back to 80s - still requires a LOT of guys (10). More than girls, actually (8)!

You can really work with this play, we changed the singers, and only used 3 boys to sing--the teacher, corey and michael, the geek was actually played by a girl, we used girls for the opening song, assembly song and prom mix, and even used backup singers to help out with the singing-so a person started the song and then the backup singers finished it.

MILLIE is a good show. ANYTHING GOES has lots of parts for females. And, you can switch around some of the support parts to females. I just did BACK TO THE 80's and that's not a good choice for you. I'm doing GODSPELL for some of the same reasons, however, I'm giving it a face lift and bringing into modern day; like the revival that was suppose to be on broadway last year.

Take a look at Baby--it's only got three male roles, and it's a really fun piece. Dear Edwina is also worth considering; that's got four male roles. You could also think about a song cycle like Songs for a New World. You could do that with just two guys. Hope that helps!

Singin' in the Rain could be an option too. There's only 3 male roles/singers in the show: Don Lockwood, Cosmo Brown, and the Production Singer for Beautiful Girl.

Once Upon a Mattress has two singing parts that are males. You can change the minstrel and wizard to girls, and that would work fairly well.

Annie Jr. has only Warbucks and Rooster featured in featured solos, We had Burt Healy played by a female and the orphans sing Never Fully Dressed anyway.

1776 is typically done with an all male cast, but I did hear of a rather interesting production of a high school in my hometown that switched all the sexes of the roles which meant only 2 men in the show. It sounds like an interesting concept and could definitely be a great social statement :-)

Millie has two male roles and many female singers. It is a great option for female heavy casts.

I think Once on this Island is a fantastic choice. There are about three major guy roles, but great singing roles for females! At least five roles for girls...have fun!