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

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.

Unless you're Steve Martin, the minimum manuscript length you need for a full-length play is about 90 pages. [His PICASSO AT THE LAPIN AGILE runs only 75 minutes, or about 67 pages in format.]

And Yes, it's also true that Harold Pinter's ASHES TO ASHES only ran 45 minutes in London and New York. And thus grabs the record for the shortest "Full-Length" play in the history of the world.

In the last several years, a few American plays have been keeping audiences in the theatre for much more than this 90-minute minimum. Part One of ANGELS IN AMERICA runs about 3 hours, not counting time for its two intermissions. And then there's THE KENTUCKY CYCLE running 6 hours . . . So time is another one of those rules that's made to be broken. But minimum length matters.

And that technical fact leads to . . .

The HAMLET Question

Near the end of Act III of this 5-act play, Hamlet stumbles on the King praying. "Now might I do it pat," says he while flashing his blade, "now he is a-praying. And now I'll do it --" But he doesn't.

So, why doesn't Hamlet kill the King
when he has the perfect chance . . .

?

And then there's the question of dividing up a full-length play into manageable chunks . . .

Acts & Intermissions

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