This paper investigates the pedagogical use of authentic plays for developing learners' L2 oral skills, measured as global accuracy pronunciation accuracy, syntactic complexity and mean length of AS-units (MLAS). The study was conducted with final year high-school students (N = 10) in an Italian compulsory curriculum. A text-based approach (TBA) followed by a performance-based approach (PBA) were implemented. Quantitative data were collected by means of an oral pre-test, mid-test and a post-test. The results regarding accuracy and complexity along with the pedagogical implications will be discussed.