Number of Characters

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > STRUCTURE > CHARACTERS

Order 'For me, it's always a question of trying to whittle things down to what the central question is and also what are the fewest number of characters I can have to make it fully dramatic. A play shouldn't have more characters than it needs at minimum and it shouldn't be any longer than it needs to be.'

-- Lee Blessing
No matter what anybody says, here's a Rule with [almost] no exceptions: What really matters in the contemporary theatre is how may performers you'll need to play the number of characters you want -- not how many characters you have.

The magic number is 10. Even if you have 33 characters, as Robert Schenkkan does in THE KENTUCKY CYCLE, you're home free if those 33 can be played by 10 performers -- or less -- playing two, three, or four roles a piece. More than 10, and the weekly financial burden of employing the actors will make most regional theatres think twice about producing your play. Sad . . . but true.

Order Amlin Gray deliberately structured HOW I GOT THAT STORY so that 21 of his 22 characters could be played by one performer. To be fair, the economics of production was only part of his motivation -- the rest was thematic. All those 21 characters represent the Event confronted by his central character.
THE KENTUCKY CYCLE is actually a dim glimmer of an exception to the Rule: 12 performers handle the 33 roles with an additional 7 in a chorus.

At the other end of this scale is the bare minimum . . .

One-Character Plays

Then there's the quicksand of . . .

Kids as Characters

And the equally problematic . . .

Animals as Characters

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