one-actadj.n.

a1684 Earl of Roscommon Wks. (1753) 176 The Romans had..three plays acted, one after another, on the same subject; the first a real Tragedy; the second the Attellane; the third a Satyr or Exode, a kind of Farce of one act.]

1801 S. J. Arnold Veteran Tar Pref. The slender plot of this Opera is borrowed from a French One-act piece, entitled ‘Le Petit Matelot’.

1872 J. R. Planché Recoll. I. iv. 73 My theatrical labours in the year 1825 terminated with the production at the Adelphi..of a one-act piece on the 12th December, entitled ‘Success; or a Hit if you like it’.

1888 Playgoers' Mag. Feb. 45 The story of Carton's self-sacrifice would form a touching little one-act play.

1912 E. Nesbit Let. in D. L. Moore E. Nesbit (1933) xv. 269 I have had a one-act play accepted by a London manager.

1967 Oxf. Compan. Theatre (ed. 3) 223/2 The one-act play survives mainly in the productions of the amateur theatre in England and America.

1990 Opera Now May 74/2 Bizet had just received the Prix de Rome in 1862, and putting aside a one-act opera, churned all the hopes and fears of a twenty-four-year-old into this magnificent work.

2000 Sunday Times 29 July (Culture section) 21/3 From quiet to loud, from gentle to thunderous, the random sound-storm builds dramatically into an engrossing one-act symphony.

1920 G. P. Baker Mod. Amer. Plays p. viii Plots and Playwrights, with its prologue, three one acts slightly connected, its long burlesque, and its epilogue, is..an interesting example.

1940 G. Marx Let. 5 Sept. in G. Marx et al. Groucho Lett. (1967) 25 El Capitan..has done magnificently with the Coward one-acts.

1983 P. Fussell Class vii. 164 One can hear even fairly classy people in the theater speaking not of one-acts but of one-acters.

1993 New Republic 8 Mar. 40/3 Unlike Ibsen, Taylor is not a master of the dramatic form, and his one-acts are creakily explicit.