If this forum is simply too film-elite to contain advice on theatre related questions, then by all means toss this question. However, i do have a query regarding stage writing, or "writing for theatre". '

1. how long (pages and/or time) is the average one act play? i know you can take into account the fact that comedies run shorter and dramas run longer; that action will have more pages but not necessarily run longer on time, but please, a simple average for both time and pages will do.

2. I'm having trouble establishing a driving conflict in this play i have conceptualized in my mind. It's about my mother. she's always sick and when i say sick, i just mean she gets ill easily. every day she comes home exhausted, we have a home cooked meal (made by her) maybe twice a year, she has back pain, migraine headaches, gall-bladder distension, and the list goes on forever.

I've lost my ability to feel empathy for her. not only am i unable to provide comfort for her, but i grow angry with every complaint she brings up about some new issue. she takes over ten medications per day to stay lucid and healthy, and the numerous anti-biotic prescriptions she has had to take over the years have nearly shot her immune system.

I feel the obligation as a writer, and as a son, to due her life some justice. The way i want to have it done is through theatre. So all you screenwriters, please have some compassion. pull down those dusty self help books on writing for theatre (because you know you still hold on to them) and draw upon your collective knowledge to assist me.

The foil i was thinking of using for my character, at least a foil for his predicament, was the presence of a distant relative who is dying. He feels remorse that he cannot reach out and offer the tears he knows she deserves because every passing of life and every pain deserves some sympathy. All the while he lives with a mother which he cannot ever remember being healthy, yet cannot express his love for her through consolation and responds in anger to her frequent bouts with health.

Anyone who has taken the time to even read this far, i thank you deeply for lending your time to a lost kid just trying to write a good story the only way he knows how; by living it first.