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• A one-act play is a play that has only one act in it as opposed to the popular formal involving three or more acts.
• One-act plays typically run between 15 minutes to an hour.
• Any play that is shorter in duration and lasts around 10 minutes falls under the category of ten-minute play.
• One-act plays were written and staged throughout the 18th & 19th centuries as “The Curtain Raisers” or “The After Pieces”.
• One-act plays were chiefly farcical and served to amuse the audience before the commencement of the actual drama or were staged for their amusement just after it had come to an end.
• The origin of the one act-play may be traced to the very beginning of drama–in ancient Greece, Cyclops, a play on the forest God, by Euripides, is an early example.
• One-act play requires no elaborate setting & costumes, & so comes in handy to be staged in amateur dramatic societies & clubs.
• One-act play is a play that has only one act, but may consist of one or more scenes.
• One-act play are usually written in a concise manner.
• One-act play deals with a single dominant situation and aims at producing a single effect.
• One-act play deals with only one theme developed through one situation to one climax in order to produce the maximum of effect.
• One-act play treats the problems of everyday life as marriage, punishment for crimes, labor conditions, divorce, etc.
• Action begins right at the starts of the play in a one-act play.
• There are no breaks in the action, that is, it is continuous since its a short play; no intervals.
• Everything superfluous is to be strictly avoided as the play is short and action takes place within a short period of time.
• One-act play introduces elaborate stage directions to minimize the time taken by the action itself.
• The creation of mood, or atmosphere is indispensable to the success of a one-act play.
• Plot in a one-act play is composed of “clearly defined problems for characters to solve.” (Kernodle, et al 60
• Plot in a one-act play is to be differentiated from Story which is a chronological detailing of events that happened on and off stage.
• Events happening off stage in a one-act play are introduced through exposition (narrative dialogue).
• Characters in a one-act play provide the motivations ( reasons ) for the events of the plot.
• Theme in a one-act play is the reason the playwright wrote the play.
• The examination of “patterns of life” (6) can be didactic or just a slice of life in a one-act play.