the rise of very short and very long plays in modern theatre

Yeah, it’s a real pendulum moment in new-play land: a lot of writers (and theaters) are clustering around ~70–90 minutes or swinging to three-hour epics — with less interest in the old “two acts + intermission = 2:15” default.

A quick calibration first: in stage format, 1 page = 1 minute (roughly), so a 70-page play isn’t “short” in audience terms — it’s usually a full-length, one-act evening.

Why the 70- to 90-minute play is everywhere

Programming + logistics

• One set, fewer breaks, easier tech, fewer costumes, shorter rehearsals.

• Can pair with talkbacks, a second piece, or a post-show event without turning the night into a marathon.

Audience behavior

• Theaters are chasing the “movie length” sweet spot: no intermission, no second-act slump, clean ending, people can still catch a train / babysitter window.

Money

• Smaller casts and tighter production demands are simply more producible right now. Even when the writing is ambitious, the package has to be doable.

Aesthetic

• A single-act full-length forces velocity: fewer scene resets, fewer “we’ll deal with this after intermission” postponements. It rewards plays that are pressure cookers.

Why the three-hour play is also thriving

Event-ness

• A long play can feel like a once-in-a-while ritual — an “I was there” night.  That’s a powerful counter-programming move against streaming and scrolling.

Scope + accumulation

• Some stories need time: generational arcs, political/economic systems, moral weather.  You’re not just watching plot — you’re watching history happen.

Institutional signaling

• Bigger theaters and festivals sometimes want a “major work” that reads as capital-I Important. Long form can be part of that rhetoric (not always, but often).

Aesthetic

• Epic length lets you do things shorter plays can’t: recurring motifs that mature, tonal drift, spacious silence, real transformation instead of mere reversal.

What’s getting squeezed in the middle

The traditional two-act, 2:00–2:30 play can feel like the least legible proposition:

• not tight enough to be “easy”

• not huge enough to be “an event”

• still requires an intermission decision (which is a whole practical/structural philosophy now)

It’s not dead. It’s just not the default.

How to choose length without guessing the market

A useful question: What’s the unit of change in this story?

• If the story turns on one sustained pressure (a confrontation, a deadline, a gathering, one contained moral crisis), you’re probably in 70–90 minutes.

• If the story turns on slow mutation (systems, eras, families, ideologies, people becoming different species of themselves), you may need 3 hours — or a two-part structure.

Practical craft tells us:

• If you keep “saving” your biggest moves for after intermission, you might be writing the old shape out of habit.

• If your second act feels like a different play, you might actually have two plays or you might need the epic frame where fracture is the point.

• If you can cut 20 pages and the play gets sharper, you probably weren’t writing long — you were writing loose.

• If you cut 20 pages and the play loses its argument, you might genuinely be writing long.

For an example of a 70-minute or less play, see the preview sample script of my play, Fontanelle.

For an example of a two-hour, thirty-minute plus play, see the preview sample of my play, Wild Beasts Among You.