One-act play

The one-act play is played in a single act stage play. He therefore usually has a time lesser extent. Evening -filling one-act plays such as Miss Julie August Strindberg of Sweden are less represented in theater repertoires. Often the pieces come out without major change of scene.

History

The one-act play is classified among the oldest dramatic forms. Even in ancient Greece developed in the mythical Dionysian environment short scenic performances, from which dramas were born. Action, time and place are united in a classical way here.

In Spain, these elements appear in the popular one-act plays of Lope de Rueda, in interludes of Cervantes. Prove the carnival games of Hans Sachs, the one-act play early caught on in Germany. The game form sat in the theaters only in the middle of the 18th century gradually. Successful implementations of this genre happened with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's " Philotas " (1759 ) or in various musical comedies of the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the ages of Viennese Classicism and Romanticism liked the short form. In the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe several one-act plays have found their place. Probably the most famous one-act plays of German literature is likely to be The Broken Jug Heinrich von Kleist's comedy.

When drama in the literary Impressionism dominated the one-act play. Among the authors who wrote such pieces, including Franz Werfel and Anton Chekhov.

Modern one-act play

In the 20th century one-act play wins popularity in modern drama. This focuses on the representation of a trackable fragment from a world that has become more complicated. Stage figures are a selected period of life portrayed long in their situation or their problems. In modern experimental theater allows the one-act opera scenes of the absurd, the discontinuity and all sorts of abstractness.

Today's one-act plays are characterized by an open beginning and an open ending. Among the dramatists of this form served in the drama include, among others, Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Ferenc Molnár, Günter Grass, the chamber pieces by Jean Tardieu or Thornton Wilder.

One-act play in musical theater

One-act operas were called in the 18th century originally as an operetta ( diminutive of the word opera = small opera). This one-act plays have been performed both by touring companies as well as of the local theaters in the framework of joint programs and colorful evenings. From the mid-19th century, the genteel, the larger theaters began increasingly to play full-length works, to distinguish themselves more from the traveling theaters. Since the one-act play by fell out of the repertoire, today only a few pieces from this period are known, such as Bastien and Bastienne by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ( probably 1768), Abu Hassan ' by Karl Maria von Weber ( 1811), and The Opera sample of Albert Lortzingstraße ( 1851).

As a counter movement to this trend developed in the 19th century, a distinct genus operetta, also consisted whose work in the early days of one-act plays. One of their author was Jacques Offenbach with his Théâtre des Bouffes in Paris. Examples are: The two blind men, Ba -ta- clan, Fortunio song, Chief evening breeze, the island Tulipatan, Betrothal in the lantern and turned the cat. One-act operetta composed by Franz Suppè, ( Pique Dame, Banditenstreiche and the beautiful Galathée ) Millöcker ( The dead guest, The Merry Binder, The chaste Diana ) and Leo Fall ( Fraternal strife ).

Late 19th to mid- 20th century came increasingly in the genre of opera new one-act plays that are listed in part as a feature-length works ( opera without a break ), as Das Rheingold by Richard Wagner ( 1869), Salome (1905 ) and Elektra (1909 ) by Richard Strauss.

Shorter one-act plays are often listed along with other works. Very popular is the combination of verismo opera Cavalleria rusticana (1889 ) by Pietro Mascagni with the two-act Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. A special role of the three Giacomo Puccini under the title Il trittico in 1918 one-act opera composed Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi one.

Other well-known one-act operas are Bluebeard's Castle by Bela Bartok (1918 ), L' Enfant et les Sortilèges (1925) and L' heure espagnole (1911 ) by Maurice Ravel, The Moon (1939) and Die Kluge (1943 ) by Carl Orff, Amahl and the Night Visitors ( 1951) and the Telephone (1947 ) by Gian Carlo Menotti and the Bear ( the Bear ) ( 1967) by William Walton.

Folk plays

An extensive for decades tradition of one-act plays, not least in Schwank, in comedy as well as in the popular play.

Several Bavarian folk pieces that shape come from the pen of Ludwig Thoma. Michael Holzinger wrote one-act plays in the vernacular of the Banat.

Film

In the pioneering days of cinema it was the filmmakers superficially about the curious display effect of moving images. As a result, time many small " one-act play " who had everyday scenes and little humorous farces to content. They were technically on a roll of film ( Reel ) limited (see act (film ) ).