English One-Act Plays Of Today

English One-Act Plays of Today (1969)
Edited by Donald FitzJohn | Oxford University Press
Condition: Good | ISBN: Of Course Not | Vendor: Crappy Old Books

Here it is: a snapshot of “today” that is now more than half a century old.
This is English One-Act Plays of Today (1969), a collection of compact dramas from when men wore polo necks in earnest and everyone was quietly worried about existentialism and the BBC.

What is this thing?

Editor Donald FitzJohn has rounded up a troupe of one-act plays designed to be:

• short enough for school stages and draughty church halls,

• serious enough to make audiences stare thoughtfully at the floor,

• and flexible enough to allow at least one teacher to say, “We’ll cut that bit, it’s a little strong.”

Inside you’ll find world-weary characters arguing in living rooms, emotional revelations in real time, and the occasional symbolic piece of furniture doing heavy metaphorical lifting. It’s a crash course in mid-20th-century British angst, presented in manageable, tea-break-friendly chunks.

About this particular copy

• Condition: Good – pages all present, text fully readable, the odd softening at the corners from years of being slapped shut at the line “We’ll run it again from the top.”

• Binding: sound, in that reassuring, “has survived several school productions and at least one over-enthusiastic stage manager” way.

• Cover: dignified OUP minimalism, with just enough wear to prove it has seen more life than most of the characters inside.

No ISBN, because the book predates the moment when every printed object needed a barcode to justify its existence. This is from the era when librarians used actual handwriting and quiet disapproval as cataloguing tools.

Why you might actually want this

• For drama teachers: A ready-made arsenal of one-act plays for when you’re told, on Tuesday, that you’re putting on a performance on Friday.

• For actors: Monologues and scenes brimming with repressed feelings, awkward pauses and the chance to smoke an imaginary cigarette with great significance.

• For readers: A weirdly comforting reminder that people in 1969 were also confused, frustrated, and oversharing in small rooms.

The Crappy Old Books angle

Here at Crappy Old Books, we specialise in the sort of titles you didn’t know you needed until you discover them quietly judging you from the shelf. This volume is:

• old enough to be charming,

• worn enough to be honest,

• and serious enough to make you feel you’re engaging with culture even if you’re reading it in your pyjamas.

Prop it on your bedside table, your rehearsal room piano, or your coffee table next to something pretentious. People will assume you:

1. Know things about theatre, and

2. Might, at any moment, start directing them.

If you’ve ever wanted 1970s school drama festival energy in book form – clipped accents, minimal budgets, maximum emotion – this is it.

Take home English One-Act Plays of Today, and enjoy yesterday’s “today” in good, gently battered condition – courtesy of Crappy Old Books, where the plays are short, the blurbs are long, and the books are only slightly traumatised by their past lives.

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