Why do one-acts attract such generic playwriting imaginations? The problem stems in part from the contrasting notion of the "full-length" play, a damaging misnomer if ever there was one. Obviously any memorable theatrical experience is "full-length"—the measure being organic wholeness on stage, not hours snoozed in the audience. The short form, however, has tended to live up to its minor (i.e., unfulfilled) status, alluring to the amateur who hasn't the confidence to write a "real" play and useful to the professional only as a kind of warm-up exercise. Beckett and Pinter, two dramatists who never measured their work by the yard, can be credited with having written the past century's most original one-acts. Neither, however, differentiated much between a 15-minute piece and a two-hour one. Pinter's insistence that... More >>>