I prefer a 2 act show for a full evening of entertainment, but it certainly doesn't have to be 2 hours.  That's actually too long for my old body.  I prefer about 90 minutes broken into 2 acts, but if the show flows nicely then one act with an hour fifteen or hour and a half is just fine.

 This post was inspired when I got a call a week ago from a friend in a nearby town, they are starting a theatre group ( lots of talented folks) but the first show they were inviting me to was THREE HOURS LONG  and something they had wrote. I declined the invitation.

  I have been to too many shows that just drug along.  Esp with young people in the audience, I feel they should be fast, high energy, and as tight as possible.

If I were to look at our local audience ... I would say please try to do something with an intermission.  (But not all audiences are the same.)  I think a break is good.  Not to mention it gives an opportunity to sell a few concessions.

Seriously though ... sometimes it's just nice to stretch the legs a bit.

A three hour show?  Whether I've heard of it or not ... I wouldn't be going.

Few shows warrant three hours; I can only think of three playwrights who have written stuff that could keep me interested past the three-hour mark: Eugene O'Neill, Shakespeare, and Aeschylus.

If your show runs past 2 h, 15 m even, it's probably ill-paced (either as a matter of writing or directing).  Of course, it depends somewhat on the genre; comedies should fly, dramas should breathe (note I didn't say drag!).

As far as intermissions, trust the playwright!  He/she is usually right.  I've seen (and been in) shows where the directors play around with the intermissions, to cut a three-acter into two or break up a one-act.  BAAAAD IDEA.  It throws everything off.  Even if one of the intermissions in a three-act play is just a five-minute reset, the audience has earned that pause.

Some of my most favorite shows are intermissionless and deserve to be: Talley's Folly and Picasso at the Lapin Agile, for example.

It's really a matter of the material.

I recently finished directing a production that was an evening of four one-acts with one fifteen-minute intermission half-way through.

I had initially anticipated that each half of the show would last about 45 minutes, so that, with the intermission, we'd run about 1 hr 45 min.

As it turned out, once the actors were up to speed, it was more like 35 minutes each half - so we started at 8:00 and were done at 9:25.

It was very well received, but more than one audience member, as they were leaving, felt compelled to remark that they were expecting the show to last until at least 10:00 pm.

So that's what I'll be using as my gold standard in the future.

Edited by edh915 - 6/19/13 at 2:14pm