3. Unity of Place
The commercial element of vaudeville often makes it inadvisable for a playlet to show more than one scene—very often an otherwise acceptable playlet is refused production because the cost of supplying special scenes makes it a bad business venture. [1]
[1] See Chapter III.
Yet it is permissible for a writer to give his playlet more than one place of happening—if he can make his story so compact and gripping that it does not lose in effect by the unavoidable few seconds' wait necessary to the changing of the scenery. But, even if his playlet is so big and dramatic that it admits of a change of scenes, he must conform it to the obvious vaudeville necessity of scenic alternation. [2] With this scenic "rule" the matter of unity of place in the playlet turns to the question of a playwright's art, which rules cannot limit.
[2] See Chapter I.
This third and last unity of the playlet may, however, for all save the master-craftsman, be safely stated as follows:
Except in rare instances a playlet should deal with a story that requires but one set of scenery, thus conserving the necessities of commercial vaudeville, aiding the smooth running of a performance, and preserving the dramatic unity of place.
We may now condense the three dramatic unities into a statement peculiarly applicable to the playlet—which would seem as though specially designed to fulfill them all:
A playlet preserves the dramatic unities when it shows one action in one time and in one place.
And now it may be worth while once more to sum up what I have said about the elements of plot—of which the skeleton of every playlet must be made up: