Short-Form Drama: Constraint as a Structural Tool

Ten minutes is not a shortened play. It is a different machine, and the constraint is the teacher. This course covers what actually fits in ten minutes and what never will, how to start a story that is already in motion, the single-situation principle that makes short work possible, why most short pieces fail at the ending rather than the beginning, the one-act as a longer but still single-pressure form, and how short-form video drama inherits the same structure under different delivery. It teaches adaptation between runtimes in both directions, the production realities that decide whether a short play ever gets staged, and how to use the form as a laboratory: a ten-minute piece is the cheapest way to test a structural idea before spending a year on it. Real plays throughout, from Glaspell to Ives to Albee.

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