ESCAPE ACTS: SEVEN CANADIAN ONE-ACTS Edited by Colleen Curran Montreal, Nuage Editions, 1992.192pp, paper, $14.95 ISBN 0-921833-21-0. CIP Grades 8 and up/Ages 13 and up Reviewed by Alan Thomas. Volume 21 Number 4 1993 September Schools and small theatre groups will be the natural purchasers of this collection of one-act plays. The editor has drawn them from across the country, Nova Scotia to British Columbia. All have been produced at least once and several have received awards. As a form, the one-act play offers only brief action and a momentary glimpse of situation and character: none of these plays requires more than three actors, and two are monologues. Probably the most appealing to a youthful audience, and also the most elaborate in plotting, is Clem Martini's Life History of the African Elephant, which is set in the Calgary Zoo and combines issues of rights (or sympathies) for animals with problems of personal self-esteem of interest to adolescents. The most challenging in terms of content are the plays Irene and Lillian Forever from Bonnie Farmer, a Black Nova Scotian writer, and Vengeance from the Montreal Jewish writer Aviva Ravel. Both these pieces have bite. This collection usefully expands the range of contemporary Canadian material available for the classroom teacher. Alan Thomas teaches literature at Scarborough College, University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario.