Telling Tales [antikvár]

EDITOR'S PREFACE Telling Tales collects twenty-eight new one-act plays, ofFering a wide range of original voices. From the comic to the tragic, political to personal, each play presents memorable characters and strong challenges for the actors. The plays can be easily produced with simple sets and costumes. The challenge is not so much in the technical requirements of the production, but rather in the development of the characters and the telling of their stories in a compressed amount of time—spanning anywhere from a httle over an hour to ten minutes in length. Many of the plays were selected from the numerous one-act festivals springing up across the country. You'll find works developed at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actor's Theatre of Louisville, Love Creek Productions, the Dramatists Guild's Young Playwrights Festival (for writers under the age of nineteen), and Manhattan Punch Line's Festival of One-Act Comedies. The one-act play has become a staple of these theaters, as well as colleges, universities, and emerging theater companies. Commercial producers generally avoid the pairings of one-acts, with their multiple casts, rehearsal schedules, sets, and costumes, and the sometimes erratic quality within a single evening. Yet it is precisely these "problems" which make the form so appealing to actors, writers, directors, designers, and audiences. Within a single evening, an audience is led into several completely different worlds and offered an array of stories, characters, and emotions with which to connect. Each story is complete, yet it feels as though the characters have a life beyond the one depicted in the play. They existed before it began and continue after its conclusion; yet somehow they've been changed by this experience. The playwright has granted us a window into their world at this particular moment. They tell their stories with amazing efficiency. In the race to tell our stories in record time, my favorite entry is the Lamia Ink! International One-Page Play Festival. The plays in this collection comprise a variety of cast sizes, from the large, predominately male casts of "Fun" and "Throwing Smoke," to the smaller, all-male casts of "Vivien," "Slaughter in the Lake,"