How many plays have you attended where you find yourself "shuffling in your seat" wondering when on earth it's going to end?

Or left feeling so "wiped-out" by the end, that you can hardly keep awake on the trip home?

In a world full of fast information, immediate gratification, and super-busy lives, few people have the time or inclination to watch a two-and-a-half hour play, without getting restless.

A recent survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts found that there was a notable decline in theater, cinema, museum, and concert attendance, from 2002 to 2008.

The reasons "why" seem obvious enough: we have so much in-home technology available, the rise of the internet, and a decrease in our available spare time. We don't even have to leave the house to shop anymore - we can simply order online and wait for it to be delivered to our door - food, clothes, household goods, you name it.

All in all, it's becoming harder and harder to convince someone to "go out".

To entice someone out of the house, you have to offer an experience that they can't get at home. Something that is so good, they don't mind making what is now perceived as "extra effort".

Live theater - whether large or small - remains a unique experience that not even film or home entertainment can match. The problem is, it's tainted by a very damaging association:

Boredom.

Our expectation of what "entertainment" is, has changed - whether we like it or not.

It's fast, exciting, highly visual, low-effort, and immediately gratifying.

Unfortunately, theater doesn't traditionally sit in this camp. It's slower in pace, and requires its audience to concentrate on dialogue and plot movement. Many of today's audiences are, simply put, out of practice!

For theaters and playwrights, we have to adapt to a faster-moving culture with shorter attention spans, if we want to entice a new theater-going public to our productions.

We also have to appreciate that many people have a very demanding job that they have to go to the following morning, or a baby-sitter being paid by the hour.

One of the most powerful things we can do therefore, is to make sure the theater experience is sharp, snappy, and immediately gratifying.

This is where the one-act play comes in.

Ordinarily, a theater might run a one-act season every 2-5 years as a bit of novelty. Some theaters use the one-act season to introduce new writing or directing talent.

With the change in our expectations, one act plays now make ideal theater projects, and therefore deserve more care and attention than they are currently getting.

One-act stories are easy to grasp, and just long enough to retain today's audience interest. And if the play doesn't interest - which, let's face it, happens now and then - it's all over pretty quickly!

An added bonus is that if you delight a crowd with a one-act play season, it's a great way to introduce them to full-length theater.

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