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Our Acts Are Different: Difference between revisions
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Most modern theatrical pieces are written in two acts. There is one set point (sometimes at a [[Cliff Hanger]]) at which the audience takes an [[Intermission]], and when they come back, the action finishes.
This, however, is pretty much solely a modern convention; older plays generally had three or five acts (with some sort of climax before each intermission, in order to make audiences excited to return). Even after the two-act structure became more popular (around the Victorian period), three- and five-act plays were not uncommon, and continue to be written to this day.
Likewise, there is also a tradition of shorter, one-act plays, in part dating from a time where a night at the theatre was meant to be an entire night at the theatre, so what would now be considered a full-length (or even rather long) play was often bookended with a couple shorter one-act plays, which the audience could skip if they wanted to arrive late or go home early.
Modern performances may change things about a bit, ignoring some of the gaps between acts, or finding a new point for an intermission nearer the half-way point, though how well these redivisions work depends on the director and the play in question. Also, sometimes, the word "Act" is used to replace the word "Scene" when a play has very few scenes, or each scene is extensive. Sometimes more than one of the above apply. It differs wildly.
Oh, yes, and some genres of theatre keep to older conventions: Operas generally have between three and five acts, though a few use the two-act structure. The [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] operas are probably the most important of these, given they're still very widely performed, and since their major role in the birth of the musical is probably the main reason musicals follow the two-act convention.
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'''Shorter plays'''
* ''[[Trial
'''Full-length'''
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* ''[[The Last Five Years]]''
* ''[[The Drowsy Chaperone]]'' lacks an intermission, despite [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|claiming to be]] a restoration and revival of what was clearly a two-act musical
* ''[["Master Harold"... and
* ''[[Follies]]'' was originally presented in one act because an intermission would probably make an awkward interruption in the action. The awkward interruption is now usual.
* ''[[A Chorus Line]]''
* ''[[Pippin]]'' was originally written in one act, but most regional productions insert an intermission.
* ''[[Assassins (theatre)|Assassins]]'' by [[Stephen Sondheim]] has no intermission, as it has no real plot.
* ''[[1776
* Jean-Paul Sartre's ''[[No Exit]]''.
* ''[[The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee|The Twenty Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee]]''
* [[Cirque Du Soleil]] tours are usually two act affairs (two-and-a-half hours with intermission), but their "resident" productions (the various Las Vegas shows, ''[[La Nouba]]'', etc.) usually have runtimes of 90 to 105 minutes with no intermission. This allows for two performances a night/ten performances a week and doesn't try the patience of audiences who would also like to gamble, etc. When the tours ''[[Nouvelle Experience]]'' and ''[[Alegria]]'' were adapted for casinos, they lost their intermissions and at least one acrobatic setpiece to reach a 90-minute runtime. In fact, editing "legit" shows has long been common practice in Las Vegas; ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]'', ''[[Avenue Q]]'', ''[[Spamalot]]'', and ''[[The Producers]]'' were all cut to 90-or-so minutes either when they opened or later in the run, dropping their intermissions among other things.
* ''[[The Magic Show]]''
== Three Acts ==
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Partially due to the addition of much more elaborate sets, the former standard of five-act plays gradually reduced to three acts. This formed its own long-standing convention until finally being largely replaced by two-act plays. However, a three-act play generally doesn't have any good way to make do with only one intermission, and an extra half-hour intermission tends to draw out the performance time, which is probably one of the reasons they aren't as common anymore.
* ''[[The Importance of Being Earnest]]'', Oscar Wilde's most famous play, is in three acts (though [[Executive Meddling|it was originally in four]]), with breaks usually taken between each.
** The three-act ''[[Our Town]]'' usually follows the same format as Earnest, as does Thorton Wilder's other famous work ''[[The Skin of Our Teeth]]''. However, ''[[The Matchmaker]]'' is in four acts, and its ([[Adaptation Displacement|much better-known adaptation]], ''[[Hello, Dolly!|Hello, Dolly]]'', is in two.
* Both Moises Kaufman's ''[[The Laramie Project]]'' and ''[[Gross Indecency]]'' are in three acts.
* [[George Bernard Shaw]]'s ''[[Arms and the Man]]'' is in three acts, but as the third is reasonably longer than either of the first two, the break usually comes after the second act.
* The musical adaptation of ''[[Giant]]'' by Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson is one of very few musicals to be in three acts.
* Most of [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s operas use the basic two-act structure. ''Princess Ida'' does not, and since the second act is the longest one by a good bit, there's no good way to use a single intermission.
** Gilbert and Sullivan tend to plot things so that each act begins relatively sedately (in order to bring the audience back in gently), then builds to a climax at the end (to excite the audience before the break). Since the first act is very short, it's hard to avoid a mood breaker through going directly from the high energy of the end of Act I to the calm academic scenes at the start of Act II.
* Many Kaufman and Hart plays, including ''[[You Can't Take It
* "Millenium Approaches", the first part of Tony Kushner's ''[[Angels in America]]'' is divided into three acts, and as "Millenium Approaches" is three hours long, it's not unreasonable to assume most productions take an intermission after each act.
** Of course, part II, ''Perestroika'', is divided into SEVEN acts, so whatever, Tony Kushner.
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From Renaissance to Neoclassical this was the standard. Theatre at this time was based off of Aristotle's and Horace's works since Classical theatre was considered ideal. The five act structure was incredibly strict (especially in the Neoclassical period), it wasn't until Romanticism and Melodrama that this structure fell out of fashion. Few modern productions have a full-length intermission between every act (though they may give a couple minutes to stretch while the scenery is changed). The older five act plays tend to be fairly long, and are often somewhat abridged in modern performances.
Now might be a good time to discuss scenes: The modern convention, and also that used by a lot of older writers, is that a scene change is only marked when there's a change in location, or the time frame moves forwards a significant amount. However, particularly around 1700, during the period known as the Restoration, you get plays such as William Congreve's five-act ''The Way of the World'', where each act takes place in a single location, but every time a character joins or leaves a conversation, a new scene is declared and numbered. This can be very, very confusing if you're used to the more standard model.
Also, Elizabethan theatre, including [[Small Reference Pools|Shakespeare]], [[Subverted Trope|Jonson, Dekker, Marlowe, and so on]], used very little scenery, so they have a tendency to switch very rapidly between different locations, whereas more recent five act plays actually do have scenery, and thus have to keep the number of locations down, generally to five or less, though one or two acts might have multiple scenes placed in different sets.
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[[Category:Theater Tropes]]
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