Length of Full-Length Plays

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > LENGTH >

'. . . that sound you hear is the shutting of theatre doors and the slashing of art subsidies. Consequently, the smart playwright is, no doubt, busy churning out those easily producible two-character, single-set plays. So why then am I writing . . . a two-part, six-hour, nineteen cast-member epic?'

-- Robert Schenkkan

Available Now: Playwriting Seminars 2.0

The revised and expanded e-book edition.

Here's the full Table of Contents and ordering link for the new edition.

Playwriting is about using up time, regardless of how long the play is. You need to use up enough time to tell the story and have it last for at least 90 minutes, the typical minimum for a full-length play. That's why using professional manuscript format is important: one page of manuscript usually takes a little over 1 minute to play on stage....