Word.ws English Dictionary

monoscene

monoscene noun: a performance or piece of art occurring within a single setting.

Noun

monoscene (plural monoscenes)

  1. A performance or piece of art occurring within a single setting.
    • Because the budget was so low, most episodes of the show had to be monoscenes to avoid building multiple expensive sets.
    • The second major compartment contains four scenes. The third segment is a monoscene grouping St Paul and the four writers of Canonical Epistles.1986, Peter Rolfe Monks, “Reading Fifteenth-Century Miniatures: the Experience of the «Horloge de Sapience» in MS. Brussels, B.R., IV. 111”, in Scriptorium, volume 40, number 2, →DOI, page 244
  2. A specific form of improvisational comedy in which scenes are performed without edits.
    • Her team once did a six-hour monoscene without any breaks!
    • This process of bringing up new things to talk about is key to making monoscenes interesting. A common problem I see in a monoscene are characters who are so focused on one and only one thing.2015 March 21, Kevin Mullaney, KevinMullaney.com, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2016

Examples of monoscene in a sentence

  • In both of these examples, the initial impression of the monoscene is of a frozen narrative moment, of the eye capturing a split second of activity.2003, David J. Roxburgh, “Micrographia: Toward a Visual Logic of Persianate Painting”, in Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, volume 43...
  • "La belle Genièvre" could have been performed on a similar stage, although a Renaissance monoscene is also possible and even likely.2007, Virginia Scott, Sara Sturm-Maddox, Performance, Poetry and Politics on the Queen's Day: Catherine de Médicis and Pierre de Ronsard at...
  • Justin Peters and Kelly Buttermore present their experimental improv show, a unique monoscene that is almost entirely silent.2016 December 1, Elise Czajkowski, “Comedy Listings for Dec. 2-8”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 11 Feb 2018:
  • Longform improv sets typically run between 20 and 25 minutes, and Big Baby performs a style known as a "bunker monoscene" in which the entire show is a single scene in a single location.2017 December 6, Robert J. Moore, “3 Things Improv Comedy Taught Me About Starting a Business”, in Entrepreneur, archived from the original...

Forms of monoscene

pluralmonoscenes

Origin of monoscene

From mono- + scene.

Words formed from monoscene

Questions about monoscene

What does monoscene mean?
Monoscene means a performance or piece of art occurring within a single setting.
How do you use monoscene in a sentence?
In both of these examples, the initial impression of the monoscene is of a frozen narrative moment, of the eye capturing a split second of activity.
What part of speech is monoscene?
Monoscene is a noun.
What is the plural of monoscene?
The plural of monoscene is monoscenes.

Words near monoscene in the dictionary

  1. monosaponification
  2. monosaposin
  3. monosaposins
  4. monosaturated
  5. monosaturation
  6. monoscene
  7. monoscenes
  8. monoscenic
  9. monoscenically
  10. monoschizotomous
  11. monoscope

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monoscene (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “monoscene.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/monoscene. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.