The Jungle Book: a Stage Adaptation

By B K Buis

Rudyard Kipling's classic story The Jungle Book is adapted for the stage for performance by all ages. This play is faithful to the original book and contains all of the characters people know and love, including Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Kaa, and Shere Khan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B K Buis
• Release date: Feb 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311060020

B K Buis

B.K. Buis has been a high school Language Arts and Theatre teacher for twenty-seven years. He's written many skits for Pioneer Drama., and The Family Tree is his first young adult novel. He also co-founded and ran a community theatre, The New London Theatre, in Snellville, Georgia.

Book preview

The Jungle Book

by Rudyard Kipling

Adapted for the stage

by B.K. Buis

Published by Kirk Buis at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Kirk Bus

This ebook is licensed for personal or educational enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please have them download it themselves. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Teachers may copy one class set of this script for classroom work. A royalty fee of $15.00 is due for any performance at which there is a paying audience. Please contact the author at [e-mail] to arrange payment. Performing at a competition for which there is no paying audience is free.

All other rights, including professional, stock or equity performance, TV, radio, film, videotape and recording are reserved. Fees for these rights will be quoted on request.

Directors are encouraged to adapt/modify lines/costumes/sets to your own situation. Animals may be represented by masks if budget is a concern.

AT RISE: Jungle birds and insects can be heard in darkness. As the lights rise, FATHER Wolf and MOTHER Wolf lounge onstage in front of their cave. Four Wolf CUBS jump back and forth over their mother.

NARRATOR: It was seven o’clock on a very warm evening in the Seeonee Hills when Father Wolf woke from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.

FATHER: Aurgh! It is time to hunt again.

(Enter TABAQUI.)

TABAQUI: Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves, and good luck and strong whit teeth go to your noble children.

FATHER: There is no food here, Tabaqui.

TABAQUI: For a wolf, perhaps not. But for myself, a dry bone is a good feast. Ah!

(TABAQUI discovers and old bone and gnaws for a second.)

TABAQUI: Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting grounds. He will hunt among these hills for the next moon, so he has told me.

FATHER: He has no right! By the Law of the Jungle, he has no right to change his quarters without due warning. He will frighten every head of game within ten miles.

MOTHER: His mother did not call him the Lame One for nothing. He can only kill cattle, so the villagers drive him away, drive him here.

(A tiger growl is heard.)

FATHER: The fool! To begin a night’s work with that noise! Does he think our buck are like his fat cattle?

TABAQUI: Shall I tell him your advice?

FATHER: Out! Out and hunt with your master. You have done harm enough for one night.

TABAQUI: I go. I might have saved myself the message.

(Exit TABAQUI. A tiger growl is heard.)

FATHER: Listen to his noise.

MOTHER: H’sh! It is neither buck nor cattle he hunts tonight. It is Man.

FATHER: Man! Are there not enough beetles and frogs that he must eat Man, and on our ground, too?

(A loud tiger roar is heard.)

MOTHER: He has missed.

(FATHER Wolf runs across the stage.)

MOTHER: What is it?

FATHER: The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s campfire and has burned his feet.

MOTHER: He’s