The one-act play stands apart as a distinct art form with some well known writers providing specialist material, among them Bernard Shaw, Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill. Alan Ayckbourn, Edward Albee and Tennesee Williams. There are also lesser-known writers with plenty of material to offer, yet sourcing one-act plays to perform is notoriously hard. This companion is the first book to survey the work of over 250 playwrights in an illuminating A-Z guide. Multiple styles, nationalities and periods are covered, offering a treasure trove of compelling moments of theatre waiting to be discovered. Guidance on performing and staging one-act plays is also covered as well as essential contact information and where to apply for performance rights. A chapter introducing the history of the one-act play rounds off the title as a definitive guide.

"Published here for the first time, Six One-Act Plays follows the 2008 collection of Richard Harsham's Twelve Plays in Search of Their Characters that comprised longer works for the stage. Influenced by the dramatic rigors of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter--Harsham subscribes to the mea culpa Pinter offered at the time of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "I've often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say: that this is what happened; that is what they said; that is what they did." These one-act plays explore the human condition in cosmopolitan settings, revealing characters who work without benefit of a metaphysical safety-net and who inflict their needy sensibilities upon one another in a fragmentary world of scarce consolations and furtive urges. The sustaining illusion of permanence is subverted by the cosmic reality: human existence, in the grand scheme, proves as fleeting as the crystalline snowflake that, after making its "mark" lodged on winter's window pane, melts away, furry-white sparkle gone into velvety-black void....Harsham catches the irony of the unsolvable human mystery--that, as individuals, we are our own "disappearing acts." Like snowflakes, no two ever alike, ever again.

Steven Berkoff has been variously described as controversial, thrilling, electric and dynamic. A Renaissance man of the theatre, he is known equally for his writing, directing and acting. Collecting together nineteen one-act plays, this volume presents never-before-published material. Abusive, shocking and endlessly surprising, these sharply written pieces showcase Berkoff's trademark controversy, black humour and dramatic dialectics. Themes that haunt much of his work are present: his luxurious verbosity; his counterpoint of crude street-patter and elegiac proclamation; sex wars; class wars; dislocation and abandonment of love in a thankless and unyielding world. The selection of plays allows the performer and reader to experience Berkoff's fluid anarchic poetry at its most profane within the complete and pithy structure of the one-act play. Established plays such as The Biblical Tales (which enjoyed success in their 2010 run at the New End Theatre, Hampstead) stand alongside previously unpublished material, giving the range of Berkoff's work full expression, from his established thematic concerns to his new and unseen work. Perfect for student and amateur performances, this volume contains a full introduction by Geoffrey Colman, Head of Acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

THE STORIES: MEMORIAL DAY shows us an unhappy couple bickering over the miseries of their marriage. They vie for the loyalties of the son they have consigned to the backyard well. When they haul him up, his is a final, uniting sadness--a straw dummy