act

A collection of scenes forming one of the main sections of a script. In stage plays and teleplays, acts are explicitly indicated in the script (e.g. “End of Act One”); in features, they are not.

One-hour TV dramas are usually broken into four acts, plus a teaser, coinciding with commercial breaks.

Half-hour sitcoms fall into into two acts, plus a teaser.

Made-for-TV movies are divided into seven acts. Stage plays can have any number of acts.

One and two-act plays are common, while Shakespearean dramas often have five acts.

Since screenplays never show act breaks, an “act” is really a theoretical concept. Screenwriters talk about three acts, meaning “the beginning,” “the middle,” and “the end.”