Act

An act in literature (play) or performance art (drama) is a major division in the action of the play or the drama.

When there is no division in the action of the play and which ends without any major break, it is called one act play because the whole action in the play is considered as a single or one division. However, an act may be divided in several short breaks known as scenes.

One unit of action is thus a scene in a play or drama, and an Act consists of several scenes or units of action.

One act plays may consist of several sequences of scenes.

In some of the recent plays, playwrights dispensed with the divisions or acts and structured them in such a manner that the units of action came to be known as episodes. An episode may contain one or more than one scene.

In the conventional theatre with a proscenium arch and curtain, an act ends with dropping of curtain and an intermission.

History

Acts were introduced in a play in ancient India by Sanskrit scholars and dramatists. Kalidas, the 4th century dramatist, in his play Abhigyan Shakuntalam had made five divisions or acts.

Such a division was introduced into England by 16th century Elizabethan dramatists who imitated the Roman philosopher Seneca of Nero’s time by structuring the action so that the play consisted of five acts. Seneca was not a playwright in modern sense but was the author of a series of ‘closet’ dramas that were influenced by Greek drama. The sixteenth century dramatists just imitated the skeleton of Senecan dramatic structure into drama having five acts.

Late in the nineteenth century, a number of writers followed the Russian writer Chekhov and Ibsen and constructed four acts in a play.

In the twentieth and the present century we have many plays having only three acts.

Nearby pages
Act of contrition, Act of God, Act of grace, Act of Uniformity, Acta Diurna, Acta Sanctorum, Actaeon