Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014
Setting the set
The believable one-act play
Short-form genres
In this chapter
· Stage matters
· Making the play work
· Spoken audio
· Unspoken audio
Full-length plays that have a three-act format can last for more than 2 hours. By contrast, one-act plays are essentially short plays telling a complete story. They are enacted against the backdrop of a single scene and may last for about 30 to 60 minutes.
A budding playwright can get acquainted with the basics of playwriting by learning to write a one-act play. The format and content of the play is largely determined by audience, so it helps to know the target audience in advance. However, if you don’t know for sure, you can keep some essential guidelines in mind to help in creating appropriate format and content for a one-act play.
What are the essential features of a one-act play? According to Aristotle, dramas should have a unity of time, location, and action. In conformity with these rules, most traditional plays have a central plot, the action of which unfolds in a single location having a duration of less than a day. These unities of drama can be used effectively in writing one-act plays, which are generally short and have no place for subplots or changes in scenes. The setting of a one-act play is usually restricted to a single scene. Thus, you should take care to generate the setting in such a way that the story line is clear to your audience.
One of the important elements in creating the setting is the use of lighting. Be sure to include detailed notes on the use of lighting to create the required setting. Ideally, the setting should engage the five senses to increase the appeal to the audience.
In general, one-act plays possess a lesser number of characters acting against a simple setting. In most cases, the focus is on the main character and his or her goals. Almost every scene of the play features the main character and the dilemmas on hand. The best way to develop the characters is to outline a character sketch and then fill in the details. The characters should be lifelike but also have a basic identifiable purpose in life (and in the play). The problems and situations they face in fulfilling their motives help in further shaping their character.
After the main task of writing a one-act play, you must then test it. The best way would be to enact the play. You can take useful feedback from those connected with the various stages of the play. Additionally, you could seek expert advice in the production of the play. Apart from a number of practice sessions, ideally perform a dress rehearsal in the final practice before a public showing.
Now let’s investigate in greater detail the main aspects of a one-act play. They might be organized any number of ways, but I’ve broken them down into set, action, verbal sound, and nonverbal sound.
Setting the set
The production maximum for a typical one-act stage play is about 45 pages, but it can be about as short as you like. Most one-act plays are set in the same setting, much like a television sitcom. All the action happens inside the house or in the office (or wherever) because it makes the entire crew’s job easier when it comes to performing. If you change the setting every couple pages, and it’s only a 10-page script, that’s a lot of scene changing in a very short amount of time. You’ll run your crew and actors into the ground or watch as they literally break a leg getting the set rearranged. Also keep in mind that each page equals about a minute of dialogue, so you don’t want to jar the audience out of the story every 10 minutes with a blackout and then have 60 seconds of random people running around onstage.
DEFINITION
A set is the physical objects that project, sometimes imaginatively, the world of the play.
As you can see already, despite their brevity, one-act plays are not easy genres to write for, and a logical, structured approach will help you.
As for character limits, keep the main characters to a minimum so the audience doesn’t have to remember too much about too many people in a short span of time. Television shows with more than one or two main characters usually never number more than five—it simply overpowers the educational level of the average viewer (which is about the eighth grade). Extras and people your audience doesn’t really have to pay attention to can be, theoretically, limitless, but I’d try not to use too many of them unless they perform a vitally important function in the play.
Although they have much in common and lend each other to adaptation, plays are different from movies in that in plays, you can use the power of suggestion and the audience will be more willing to play along. If two people walk onstage alone and say, “It’s so crowded,” the audience will fill in the emptiness with an image of lots of people. In movies and television, however, you’d need the extras, or it would look weird.
Keeping that in mind can help eliminate complications in your playwriting. How many scenes you can put in a one-act play depends on your definition of scene, but as long as there’s good flow to the overall action, you can have a handful of scenes or even several dozen. It doesn’t really matter as long as you maintain your audience’s attention.