CHAPTER IV – READING AND WRITING DRAMA (THE ONE-ACT PLAY)

Objectives

In this Chapter, the student is expected to –

a. identify the various elements, techniques, and literary devices in drama;
b. understand intertextuality as a technique as a technique of drama;
c. conceptualize a character/setting/plot for a one-act play;
d. explore different modalities vis-à-vis envisioning the script
e. write short exercises involving character, dialogue, plot, and other elements of drama; and
f. write at least one scene for one-act play, if in a group, or develop a one-act script individually applying the
various elements, techniques, and literary devices of the genre.

Drama, Theater, and Play Differentiated

The terms drama, theater and play are not interchangeable, but dependent of each other. The term drama (from
Greek theatron which means – a place of seeing) consists of characters in conflict and in action. Theater is the
arena for the action and the sensory experience of that action. While play is the performed written material, or
script, together with all the other elements like stage direction, lighting, sets, sceneries, characters, action, etc.
The writers who write for the stage are called playwrights.

Definition of a Play
A play is a structured and unified story, comic or dramatic, complete in itself with a beginning, middle, and end,
that expresses the playwright’s passion and vision of life, shows unfolding conflict that builds to a climax, and
deals with dimensional lifelike humans who have strong emotions, needs, and objectives that motivate them to
take action. It is constructed with a plausible and probable series of events, written to be performed and
therefore told with speeches and actions plus silences and inactions, projected by actors from a stage to an
audience that is made to believe the events are happening as they watch.
Perhaps the technical definition of the term may be too long to comprehend, but let’s take a look at the key words that
are contributory to the makeup of the play.

1. A play is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The story may be about anything that picks the
interest of the writer, be it true or imagined, which tells a universal issue or truth. The series of events lead to the
conflict, usually found in the middle part, and to the climax of the story, which is usually at the end of the play.
2. A play has characters, meaning there are three-dimensional humans walking, running, talking, and all other
possible acts human beings are capable of.
3. A play is performed, not told. The play’s characters perform the story on a stage or any place that serves as
such; they do not tell it. The characters speak their lines and dialogues as real human beings. The dialogue, or the
exchange of spoken lines, together with the scenery or sets, lights or darkness, sound or music, and the series of
events help move the play forward.
4. A play has an audience. The actors of a play perform for an audience who must believe that the series of
events they see on stage are actually happening. This is what you call the suspension of disbelief. The audience
believes the play, in the back of their mind, as real and leaves out any form of doubt to be able to allow the play
take its complete effects on the watcher.
5. A play has elements that work together to unify themselves together for one singular goal: to affect the
audience. The following are the main elements of a play:
Elements of the Genre

Character
All characters in a play must compel the audience’s attention. While it’s been said that audiences often go to the
theater to see reflections of themselves; they don’t go to see duller reflections of themselves. A compelling character
can be a king or a carpenter, a monster or a marriage broker. The title the character wears doesn’t matter. Interest is
engendered by what a character does. The most interesting character in your play is the person with the greatest
needs, the biggest problems, and the greatest potential for action. She may be seductive, funny, or flawed. He may be
courageous, cruel, or kind. The first test is yourself: Does your character interest you? They have to fascinate you. So
an initial question you should ask yourself is, What kind of people fascinate you in real life?

Setting
The setting of a play, like that of a short story, is the place and time where the events of the drama take place. But
unlike a short story, where the setting can be somewhat easy to overlook, in a play it dominates the audience's
experience of the drama. It quite literally forms the backdrop for the action. Sometimes there are multiple settings in a
single play; sometimes the entire story unfolds in one place. In many cases the setting itself can function as a
character; in every case the setting for the drama establishes the emotional atmosphere, or mood, for the story. Keep
in mind that the setting constitutes more than the physical characteristics of the set, such as the way a room is
decorated or how the furniture is arranged. It also includes the historical and cultural moment in which the story takes
place, or its social context.

Plot
Plot is the arrangement of actions designed to tell the story of a play. The simplest way to describe any plot is to list
every action of the play, starting with the first moment and moving to the last. Plot depends on tension and suspense,
created by the playwright’s organization of actions and information and by the playwright’s posing of questions. In
constructing an effective, intriguing plot, a playwright must create, prolong, subvert, and satisfy audience expectations.

Language and Dialogue

Language refers to what is spoken on stage by the actors in a play. Most of a play’s action and meaning is
articulated through language, what a character says, how a character speaks. Aristotle wrote about language as “
tone, imagery, and cadence (sound).”
In many ways, the experience of watching or reading a play is similar to that of eavesdropping on strangers
seated near you in a restaurant. Because plays rarely have narrators, the audience must follow the words of the
characters in order to follow the plot. Almost the entire story is told through dialogue, or what the characters say
to each other, to themselves, and in some cases, directly to the audience.
Good dialogue tells the audience what it needs to know – the time period, background, setting, and style of a play
– but above all, good dialogue creates an event, changes the dynamic of the plot, and alters the characters’ lives. It
is action-oriented. It has a subject and a predicate, and it emphasizes the verb. An active verb is dramatic. Good
dialogue is language doing. Good dialogue is both expressive and economical. In most plays, it must shift tenses
constantly:
g. It must deliver exposition (what has happened).
h. It must depict action (what is happening).
i. It must promise future action (what may happen).
The One-Act Play
The one-act play defies rigid definition: you’ll find it as flexible, diverse, often experimental, and intensely
theatrical form. It is a play that has only, as its name suggests, one act. The one-act has an honored tradition: We
can say that the early Greek playwrights wrote a form of one-acts, although John Millington Synge’s Riders to the
Sea is often considered the formal beginning of the modern form.
Length
The one-act, a theatrical version of literature’s short story, demands a judicious economy. It varies in playing time from
perhaps thirty minutes to over an hour; most are around forty minutes long.

Characteristics of the One-Act

One incident. By definition a one-act is a compressed dramatization of a single incident or sequence of action,
unlike a full length play’s expanded multiple incidents or actions.

Number of characters. The one-act’s brevity limits the number of characters, and all must be essential to the
play. Too many characters result in thin characterization. Although no one wishes to limit the number of
characters – the best rule is “as many as your play demands” – a helpful guideline is to think of two to perhaps
four characters. And otherwise excellent playwriting book says you can’t write a successful one-act with only two
characters, but that is clearly incorrect.

Unification. Effective one-act plays maintain a unity of action, focused on one particular conflict; unity of place, within
a single physical location; and unity of time, without changes of time. One-acts are so short that a blackout or break in
the action, to shift scenery or indicate passage of time, interrupts the flow, disrupts audience focus on the action, and
changes the play’s unity. If you find you need several changes, identify the single crucial scene and ask yourself if the
entire play can take place there.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the One-Act Play

The one-act is at its best when sharply focused on a single significant incident, with excellent characterization and
a story that is sharply compressed into its essentials. One-acts are carefully edited with a keen sense of theater to
eliminate unnecessary words and action. At its worst, the one-act falls victim to its experimental nature seeking
merely to be different and ignoring commonsense structural elements.