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24 Cards in this Set

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Representative characters
Characters in a play who embody characteristics that represent an entire group.
Stage Right
Actor's Right
Stage Left
Actor's Left
Black Box Stage
The black box theater (or experimental theatre) is a relatively recent innovation,[citation needed] consisting of a simple, somewhat unadorned performance space, usually a large square room with black walls and a flat floor.
Down Stage
Front of the stage
Up Stage
Back of the stage
Choregus
In the theatre of ancient Greece, chorêgos (pl. chorêgoi; Greek: χορηγός, Greek etymology: χορός "chorus" + ἡγεῖσθαι "to lead") was an honorary title for a wealthy Athenian citizen who assumed the public duty of financing and paying the expenses of the preparation of the chorus and other aspects of dramatic production that were not covered by the state.[1] The prizes for drama at the Athenian festival competitions were awarded jointly to the playwright and the chorêgos.
Burlesque
Burlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. In 20th century America, the form became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief attraction
Melodrama
The theatrical genre of melodrama uses theme-music to manipulate the spectator's emotional response and to denote character types. The term combines "melody" (from the Greek "melōidía", meaning "song") and "drama" (Classical Greek: δράμα, dráma; meaning "action"). While the use of music is nearly ubiquitous in modern film, in a melodrama these musical cues will be used within a fairly rigid structure, and the characterizations will accordingly be somewhat more one-dimensional: heroes will be unambiguously good and their entrance will be heralded by heroic-sounding trumpets and martial music; villains are unambiguously bad, and their entrance is greeted with dark-sounding, ominous chords.
Melodramas tend to be formulaic productions, with a clearly constructed world of connotations: A villain poses a threat, the hero escapes the threat and/or rescues the heroine. The term is sometimes used loosely to refer to plays, films or situations in which action or emotion is exaggerated and simplified for effect. As against tragedy, melodrama can have a happy ending, but this is not always the case.
Three Origins of Theater
1. Ritual
2. Storytelling
3. Pleasure
Tableau
The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed actors or artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting/photography, and as such it has been of interest to modern photographers. The most recent hey-day of the tableau vivant was the 19th century with virtually nude tableau vivants or "poses plastiques" providing a form of erotic entertainment.
Chorus
The Greek chorus (choros) is a group of twelve or fifteen minor actors in tragic and twenty-four in comic plays of classical Athens. They could be portraying any characters - for instance, in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the chorus comprises the elderly men of Argos, whereas in Euripides' The Bacchae, they are a group of eastern bacchants, and in Sophocles' Electra, the chorus is made up of the women of Argos.
Slatinslavsky
Stanislavski's 'system' focused on the development of artistic truth onstage by teaching actors to "live the part" during performance. Despite being primarily known in The United States for Realism, Stanislavski developed the system to be applied to all forms of theater, directing and producing melodrama, vaudeville, opera, etc. In order to create an ensemble of actors all working together as an artistic unit, he began organizing a series of studios in which young actors were trained in his system. At the First Studio of MAT, actors were instructed to use their own memories in order to naturally express emotions. Stanislavski soon observed that some of the actors using or abusing Emotional Memory were given to hysteria. Although he never disavowed Emotional Memory as an essential tool in the actor's kit, he began searching for less draining ways of accessing emotion, eventually emphasizing the actor's use of imagination and belief in the given circumstances of the text rather than her/his private and often painful memories.
Proscenium Arch
A Proscenium theatre is a theatre space whose primary feature is a large frame or arch (called the proscenium arch even though it is frequently not a rounded archway at all), which is located at or near the front of the stage. The use of the term "proscenium arch" is explained by the fact that in Latin, the stage is known as the "proscenium", meaning "in front of the scenery."
In a proscenium theatre, the audience directly faces the stage, which is typically raised several feet above front row audience level, and views the performance through the proscenium "arch". The main stage is the space behind the proscenium arch, often marked by a curtain which can be lowered or drawn closed. The space in front of the curtain is called the "apron". The areas obscured by the proscenium arch and any curtains serving the same purpose (often called legs or tormentors) are called the wings. Any space not viewable to the audiences is collectively referred to as offstage. Proscenium stages range in size from small enclosures to several storeys tall.
In general practice, a theatre space is referred to as a "looking in gods eye" any time the audience directly faces the stage, with no audience on any other side, even if there is not a formal proscenium arch over the stage. Because it seems somewhat incongruous to refer to a proscenium theatre when no proscenium arch is present, these theatres are sometimes referred to as "end-on" theatre spaces.
Auteur
In film criticism, the 1950s-era Auteur theory holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he were the primary "Auteur" (the French word for "author"). In some cases, film producers are considered to have a similar "Auteur" role for films that they have produced.
In law the Auteur is the creator of a film as a work of art, and is the original copyright holder. Under European Union law the film director shall always be considered the author or one of the authors of a film.[1]
Auteur theory has had a major impact on film criticism ever since it was advocated by film director and film critic François Truffaut in 1954. "Auteurism" is the method of analyzing films based on this theory or, alternately, the characteristics of a director's work that makes him an Auteur. Both the Auteur theory and the Auteurism method of film analysis are frequently associated with the French New Wave and the film critics who wrote for the influential French film review periodical Cahiers du cinéma.
Thrust Stage
In theater, a thrust stage (also known as a platform stage or open stage [1]) is one that extends into the audience on three sides and is connected to the backstage area by its up stage end. A thrust has the benefit of greater intimacy between performers and the audience than a proscenium, while retaining the utility of a backstage area. Entrances onto a thrust are most readily made from backstage, although some theatres provide for performers to enter through the audience using vomitory entrances. An arena, exposed on all sides to the audience, is without a backstage and relies entirely on entrances in the auditorium or from under the stage.
Judy Taymor
Julie Taymor (born December 15, 1952) is an American director of theater, opera and film. Taymor's work has received many accolades from critics, and she has earned two Tony Awards out of four nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, an Emmy Award, and an Academy Award nomination for Original Song. She is widely known for directing the stage musical, The Lion King, for which she became the first woman to win the Tony Award for directing a musical. The Lion King also earned her a Tony for original costume designs
Susan Glaspell
Her novels and plays are committed to developing deep, sympathetic characters, to understanding 'life' in its complexity. Though realism was the medium of her fiction, she was also greatly interested in philosophy and religion. Many of her characters make principled stands.
Susan Keating Glaspell (1 July 1876 – 27 July 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and bestselling novelist. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States. She also served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.
prescriptive criticism
Author's criticism
David Garrick
Perhaps it was Garrick's acting, the most showy of his careers, that brought him the most adulation. Garrick was not a large man, only standing 5'4" and his voice is not described as particularly loud. From his first performance, Garrick departed from the bombastic style that had been popular, choosing instead a more relaxed, naturalistic style that biographer Alan Kendall states "would probably seem quite normal to us today, but it was new and strange for his day." Certainly this new style brought acclamation: Alexander Pope stated, "he was afraid the young man would be spoiled, for he would have no competitor." and Garrick quotes George Lyttelton as complimenting him by saying, "He told me he never knew what acting was till I appeared." Even James Quin, an actor in the old style remarked, "If this young fellow be right, then we have been all wrong."
While Garrick's praises were being sung by many, there were some detractors. Theophilus Cibber in his Two Dissertations on the Theatres of 1756 believed that Garrick's realistic style went too far:
His over-fondness for extravagant attitudes, frequently affected starts, convulsive twitchings, jerkings of the body, sprawling of the fingers, flapping the breast and pockets; a set of mechanical motions in constant use; the caricatures of gesture, suggested by pert vivacity; his pantomimical manner of acting, every word in a sentence, his unnatural pauses in the middle of a sentence; his forced conceits; his wilful neglect of harmony, even where the round period of a well-expressed noble sentiment demands a graceful cadence in the delivery.
But Garrick's legacy was perhaps best surmised by Rev Nicolas Tindal, the historian, when he said that:
The 'deaf' hear him in his 'action, and the 'blind' see him in his 'voice'.[15]
Andre Antoine
André Antoine (31 January 1858, Limoges (Haute-Vienne) - 19 October 1943, Le Pouliguen (Loire-Atlantique), French actor, theatre manager, film director, author, and critic who is considered the inventor of modern mise en scène in France.
Five Elements of Theater
1. Performer
2. Audience
3. Desgn
4. Space
5. Text
What could be considered the Sixth Element of Theater?
Liveness
What are the nine questions?
1. Who are the characters?
2. Where are they?
3. What time is it?
4. What objects surround them?
5. What are their relationships?
6. What are the given circumstances?
7. What is in their way?
8. What do they do to obtain their goal?
9. What are their goals?