Five One-Act Plays

by Jonathan Levy

I wrote these five one-act plays, among many others, over a period of thirty-five years. I have always found the form of the one-act play congenial. It permits the author and actors to epitomize, in a few actions and a few words, a moment which implies a situation or condition much larger than that single moment, which the audience understands even if the characters don’t. The technical difficulty of the one-act play is to imply just enough for this understanding to take place.All the plays include, and several depend on music, which may be recorded but will preferably be live. (The music is included, or a source for it is printed with each play). All the plays have small casts of not more than three actors. Music should be thought of a fourth voice in each play. It should never be considered simply background music, or filler.These plays are very different from one another in setting, character and, especially in language. What I discovered on rereading them is that what they have in common is a sense of loss--the memory of loss, the expectation of loss, and loss itself. I had no idea this was so. I wrote each to be a comedy. And I hope they still, alone or in combinations, play as comedies.

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 25, 2012