Customer Reviews

Writing 45-Minute One-Act Plays, Skits, Monologues, & Animation Scripts for Drama Workshops: Adapting Current Events, Social Issues, Life Stories, News & Histories

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I'm teaching a playwriting workshop where I will be exclusively using the one-act form for the first time. I saw this title and thought it should be helpful, so I ordered a copy from the print on demand publisher. This book is a terrible workshop resource. Out of 288 pages, two-thirds of the book are strictly play scripts and there's a 31 page Appendix that even includes "1,004 Action Verbs for Communicators" that begins with the word Abated and ends with Zoned. Also Appendix D which is six pages of other books published by Anne Hart. Totally ridiculous. Out of the sixty pages she did write, many are concerned with marketing your script, including animation. Most of her writing has no relevance at all for a playwriting workshop. It doesn't help me as a teacher of one-act playwriting to know that many colleges now offer animation courses.

This book about writing short plays has Chapter Two offering a two paragraph page giving platitudes about writing short plays and then proceeds to give the reader a 100 page full length play. Why? So the reader can simply turn it into a 45 minute play by keeping "...the characters a few as possible, usually about 5 characters." In that two paragraph explanation for filling up a 288 page book with 100 pages of script, she also says one can turn this full length play into a monologue.

I can go on but I'm too upset at the misrepresentation of what this book is supposed to contain. I can understand why it's published on iUniverse where you can't get a refund on a product you're unable to peruse before purchasing. Save your $20 and buy a good anthology of one-acts instead. Anne Hart, you should be ashamed of yourself.