This site describes 5506 one-act plays using four or fewer actors. It makes available unpublished and published scripts by worldwide playwrights in multiple languages and various media.

Each citation presents any available information, sometimes bare bones, sometimes with extensive analysis or even script text. The citation seeks to provide playwright nationality, occupations, and birth and death dates, title (even alternate titles), approximate running time, genre, language, setting in place and time, cast size and gender, copyright, bibliographical entry data, dramatis personae (with character name, gender, age, program description), plot synopsis or synopses, production needs and history, author's biography, critical commentary, suggestions of scripts with which it could pair, record of mounting online and updating, literary themes.

"What's the point of a play that no one ever sees?"
—David Eliott Brown, Scottish playwright (1964-2005)



"And to be a playwright today is to be a Willy Loman, where you take your plays in a suitcase and go anywhere."
—John Guare, responding to Arthur Miller in a round table,The New York Times, September 24, 2000

Small-Cast One-Act Guide Online is a free resource for playwrights, actors, agents, directors, dramaturgs, producers, publishers, students, and librarians. It encourages the publication, perusal, production, payment of royalties, and preservation of scripts.

visits since 1995