Theater 102 Midterm Review

Front 1

Passive listening

Back 1

Attention is divided; multitasking.

Front 2

Active listening

Back 2

You try to figure out relationships.

Front 3

Subtextual

Back 3

Below the text.

Front 4

Ephemeral

Back 4

short-lived; fleeting

Front 5

Fauvists

Back 5

Wild beasts, paint in wild colors to intent emotion.

Front 6

Picasso

Back 6

"art is the lie that tells the truth"

Front 7

Storyboard

Back 7

Tells the story visually.

Front 8

Lee and Austin

Back 8

Main characters from true west, start out completely different, then become extremely similar, then trade places by the end of the play. Start becoming homogenized.

Front 9

Id

Back 9

Part of us that acts like a 5 year old.

Front 10

Superego

Back 10

our sense of morality.

Front 11

Actor's job

Back 11

To live truthfully in the given circumstance of the play.

Front 12

Tactics

Back 12

What we do to get what we want; achieve our objective.

Front 13

Tactic techniques in plays

Back 13

Threatening, intimidating, pleading, seducing.

Front 14

Lee's tactics

Back 14

Uses physical intimidation and blackmailing to get what he wants.

Front 15

The zoo story

Back 15

The most important part is the story of Jerry and the dog.

Front 16

People that live in Jerry's apartment

Back 16

Crazy landlady, puerto rican family, the black princess transvestite, lady that cries all the time, and the insane dog.

Front 17

Jerry

Back 17

Extremely unstable mentally, aggressive, talkative, bothers Peter the entire play. Tells te story of him and the dog. "I went to the zoo!"

Front 18

Peter

Back 18

Character in zoo story that is mentally stable, earns a good living, kills jerry at the end of the play.

Front 19

Diction

Back 19

Reinforces the narrative.

Front 20

Blocking

Back 20

When you move characters around the stage.

Front 21

Peter Brook

Back 21

British, But works mainly in France. Directs a lot of old plays such as the Maha Barata. Invites audience of French school children and asks them to tell story of the play.

Front 22

Tragic play

Back 22

Oleanna is an example. Protagonist that suffers great fall through own human nature. Based on an individual's struggles.

Front 23

Tragic realization

Back 23

Also called anagnorisis, moment when tragic hero realizes he's screwed.

Front 24

Tableau

Back 24

Frozen stage image.

Front 25

Aristotle

Back 25

Gave rules about tragedy, wrote the "poetics". Emphasized the preeminence of plot over character and defined tragedy's action as an imitation of a well meaning hero who makes a mistake experiences a downfall, suffering, and even death.

Front 26

Catharsis

Back 26

Purging or cleansing of emotions. Socrates Oedipus the king, or Oedipus Rex know about it.

Front 27

Euripides

Back 27

Playwright that wrote Medino, most modern of ancient Greek playwrights. Mr. Oakes' favorite.

Front 28

Comedy

Back 28

World of this type of play moves from chaos to order. Most end in a wedding. Wedding is order because the ceremony itself is ritualistic and has an order, it brings order to society. Has to do with society.

Front 29

Weddings

Back 29

Make sure humanity moves onto next generation, "the cycle of life".

Front 30

Pantalone

Back 30

Wants younger women, "horny".

Front 31

Commedia del arte

Back 31

Old form of comedy that moleaire adopted. Improvisation.

Front 32

Doctore

Back 32

Medical doctor or professor, will always be wrong and quoting in Latin.

Front 33

Zanies

Back 33

Clowns, slapstick humor.

Front 34

Arliquino

Back 34

Lower in class, cares about food like no other, usually far or a servant or both. Knows more than master, tries to screw him over.

Front 35

Comic vision

Back 35

The lifeforce being celebrated, sex!

Front 36

Moléar

Back 36

Comedies were comedia del arté. Similar to Shakespeare, he was an actor before becoming a playwright. Wrote two plays: misanthrope, tartouf.

Front 37

Melodrama

Back 37

Less complex form of theatre. There's the good guys vs. the bad guys. People are either entirely good or entirely evil.

Front 38

Theatre

Back 38

A form of art and entertainment that places actors before a group of people(audience), in a representation of life.

Front 39

Immediacy and Presence

Back 39

These set theatrical art apart from other forms of art. For theatre to happen actors and audiences must come together at a certain time and in a certain place.

Front 40

Difference between movies and plays

Back 40

Theatre does not involve the huge audiences that attend popularentertainments such as rock concerts and sporting events and watch film and television programs. Mass media contains millions of viewers. In contrast, a theatrical event is restricted to a minimal number of seats in a single building.

Front 41

Olleana

Back 41

Play written by David Mamet. Classical tragedy. John has a tragic flaw. John tries to help Carol by telling her grades don't matter. His desire to stay in the office because he sees her the way he was when he was a student. If he had left when his wife asked him nothing would've happened, yet his helpful nature screwed him.

Front 42

Tartuffe

Back 42

Play written by Moliere that presents the perils to a family of a phony religious person's greed.

Front 43

The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Back 43

Play written by Bertlot Brecht. Brecht demonstrates the selfless act of a young woman saving a child in time of war.

Front 44

Theatre's Aliveness

Back 44

Theatre is alive as actors tell the story in immediate communication with the audience.

Front 45

Parallels between art and life

Back 45

Actors<--->Humanity, Simulation<--->Reality, Rehearsal<--->Learning, Improvisation<--->Spontanaeity, Stage<--->World, Audiences<--->Society

Front 46

Theatre's doubleness

Back 46

The actors are human beings playing at being other human beings. The stage is a platform that convinces us it is another world. Art mirroring life, and life mirroring art

Front 47

Reflections in the Mirror

Back 47

The doubleness about the theatrical experience reflets a sense of life lived onstage. The audience experiences the actor both as actor--living presence of another human being--and as fictional character.

Front 48

Theatre's fictions

Back 48

Theatre creates the illusion, as we watch that we are sharing an experience with others for the first time.

Front 49

Theatre's Spaces

Back 49

Peter Brooks, 3 basic components of theatre. Theatre has been the changing physical relationships of actor and audience. This changing relationship mirrors the changing status of audiences and the changing social, economic, and political importance of theatre to society.

Front 50

3 basic components of theatre

Back 50

Actor, space, audience.

Front 51

Peter Brooks

Back 51

Director. Founder of the international center for theatre in Paris. Co-director of England's Royal Shakespeare Company. Tries to connect the stage and the world around it. Said "Theatre is the act of seeing and being seen." Requires a special place. Word "Theatre" comes from the Greek word "Theatron", meaning "seeing place".

Front 52

Formula for theatre

Back 52

A man or woman stands in front of an audience in a special place and performs actions that lead to interactions with other performers and audiences. For many theorists, theatrical communication begins and ends with the audience.

Front 53

Audience's expectations

Back 53

Play is related to life experiences, expecting the familiar, collective response, rules of decorum, central to the event.

Front 54

Related to life experiences

Back 54

Audience expectation that expects play's events to be authentic in feelings and experiences.

Front 55

Expecting the familiar

Back 55

Audience expectation based largely on plays we have already seen or on our experiences with films and television. Audiences enjoy the familiar in plots, characters, and the situations. All audiences come to the theatre with certain expectations that have been shaped by their previous theatergoing experiences.

Front 56

Collective response

Back 56

Audience expectation. We experience a performance as a group-as a collective thinking and feeling presence. psychologists tell us that being in an audience satisfies a deeply felt human need: the need to participate collectively, whether with laughter, tears, appreciative silence, or thundering applause. Major element of experience of live theatre is the sharing of feelings with others around us.

Front 57

Rules of Decorum

Back 57

Expectation that audiences must make preparations for attending a play and observe certain etiquette. No rules for experiencing a theatrical performance. Courtesy is possibly the only rule for the audience.

Front 58

Central to the event

Back 58

Audience expectation, role of audience as a "co-creator" has received attention. Active participants sharing in the cultural, social, and political issues set forth by the production.

Front 59

Waiting for Godot

Back 59

Play written by Samuel Beckett; absurdist play.

Front 60

Poor theatre

Back 60

Barrier between stage and audience is broken down.

Front 61

Drama's forms

Back 61

tragic, comedy, tragic comedy, melodrama, farce, epic, absurd.

Front 62

Drama's essential forms

Back 62

Not so much ways of classifying plays by their endings as ways of talking about the playwright's vision of experience- of the way he or she perceive of life. Tragedy, comedy, tragic comedy.

Front 63

Tragedy

Back 63

Where the protagonist suffers a fall due to their own actions. World order stays as it was and causes the protagonists' fall. The first of the great dramatic forms in Western Drama, makes a statement about human fallibility.

Front 64

Tragic vision

Back 64

Writer's experience conceives of people as both vulnerable and invincible, as capable of abject defeat and transcendent greatness. Oedipus the King is an example.

Front 65

Difference between tragedy and comedy

Back 65

Tragedy-Individual, metaphysical, ends in death, error, suffering, pain, life-denying, separation. Comedy-Society, social, endurance, folly, joy, pleasure, procreative, euphoria, happiness.

Front 66

Comic vision

Back 66

Writer of comedy calls for sanity reason and moderation in hun behavor so that society can function for the well being and happiness of its members. End of almost any comedy. Allow us to see that good sense wins the day and that humanity endures in the vital, flexible, and reasonable. Shakespeare said:"Alls well that ends well". End of comedy. Celebrates human endurance and survival in unions and reunions.

Front 67

Tragic comedy

Back 67

The mixture of tragedy, which went from good fortune to bad, and comedy, which reversed the order from bad fortune to good. Examples are the Buried Child, The Three Sisters, The Birthday Party. Plays with tragic beginnings with comic endings.

Front 68

Modern tragic comedy

Back 68

Really bad things happen but the characters decide to continue to fight. Famous quote by Samuel Beckett: "I can't go on, I'll go on."

Front 69

Farce

Back 69

From latin word "stuffing" in its culinary sense. Plot depends on skillfully exploited situation rather than upon character development.

Front 70

Anton Chekhov

Back 70

Director connected to Moscow Art Theare, wrote "The Three Sisters."

Front 71

Samuel Beckett

Back 71

Wrote "Waiting for Godot", a modern tragic comedy. Irishman who lived in France.

Front 72

Bertlot Brecht

Back 72

German playwright, founded epic plays. Wrote poems about horrors of war, very successful. Founded Berliner Ensemble. Also wrote "The Caucasian Chalk Circle".

Front 73

Epic Theatre

Back 73

Created by Bertlot Brecht, plays as episodic and narrative. Sequences of incidents or events narrated without artificial restrictions as to time, place, or formal plot.

Front 74

Alienation Effect

Back 74

Brecht wanted to prevent the audience's empathetic "willing suspension of disbelief" and force them to look at everything in a fresh light and, above all, to think. Wanted audiences to absorb social criticism and to carry new insights out of the theatre into their own lives.

Front 75

Climactic plays

Back 75

Heightens drama by limiting the time. Builds up to a climax over time. Playwrights begin these stories near the climax.

Front 76

Absurdist plays

Back 76

Invented directly after WWII, shows life's irrationality.. Zoo Story is an example Non-opinionated view by the playwright. Took place in time where god was dead, because people couldn't see the same idea of him.

Front 77

Drama

Back 77

Comes from the greek word dran- to do/to act. Most often defined as a pattern of words and actions having the potential for doing or becoming living words and actions.

Front 78

Drama as imitation

Back 78

Every drama is an imitation that confronts the mystery of human behavior. Aristotle described drama as mimesis.

Front 79

Jean Piaget

Back 79

"In plays we tend to imitate through those things that arouse ambivalent emotions within us."

Front 80

Plot

Back 80

An arranged sequence of events or incidents usually havi a beginning, middle, and end.

Front 81

Character

Back 81

Includes the physiological and psychological makeup of the persons in the play.

Front 82

Language

Back 82

The spoken word, including symbols and signs.

Front 83

Thought or ideas

Back 83

The play's meaning is its underlying idea. Its general and particular truths about experience.

Front 84

Spectacle

Back 84

Aristotle used this to include all visual and aural elements. Music, properties, machines, and lighting effects.

Front 85

Actual time

Back 85

Length of performance.

Front 86

Symbolic time

Back 86

Integral to the play's structure and may be spread over hours, days, or years. Example is Hamlet takes four hours to perform yet the story covers many months.

Front 87

Henrik Ibsen

Back 87

Playwright, father of modern drama. He wrote plays dealing with problems of contemporary life, particularly those of the individual caught in a repressive society.

Front 88

Play Structure

Back 88

Exposition--->Confrontation--->Crisis--->Climax--->Resolution.

Front 89

Monodrama

Back 89

Samuel Beckett has been a major influence on experimentalists looking for ways to introduce into ththeatre intuitive events, talking pieces, interior monologues, and minimal staging.

Front 90

Jerry Gortowski

Back 90

Said poor theatre mirrors a trend in the modern theatre to reduce the theatrical experience to essentials. Kevin Oakes doesn't like his saying.

Front 91

Sanford Meisner

Back 91

"Acting is living truthfully in imagined circumstances."

Front 92

Actor's goal

Back 92

To tell the character's circumstances in the play's story as truthfully and effectively as possible.

Front 93

External techniques

Back 93

The activity by which an actor chooses, imitates, or outwardly illustrat a character's behavior.

Front 94

David Garrick

Back 94

Called acting mimical behavior. Introduced what some called naturalistic acting into the English theatre. Believed that the actor could produce emotions by a convincing imitation and skilled projection of those emotions being imitated. Didn't believe that the actor should actually experience anger or sadness or joy to project these emotions to an audience.

Front 95

Internal belief

Back 95

Second school of thought on acting emerged that was intuitive, subconscious, and subjective. Actors work from "inside-out".

Front 96

Actor's tool

Back 96

Body, voice, impulses, emotions, concentration, imagination, improvisation, and intellect.

Front 97

Constantine Stanislavsky

Back 97

Russian actor/director. Used his popular "Method. Enforced internal belief. Founded the Moscow Art Theatre. Laid down basis for a psychological understanding of acting and fused it with a deep sense of aesthetic truth. Wrote "An Actor Prepares", "Building a Character", and "Creating a Role". Also famous for "emotional recall".

Front 98

"Physical Score"

Back 98

Psychophysical action. As a means of triggering emotional memory in a more spontaneous and truthful way.

Front 99

Practical Aesthetics

Back 99

Goal is to provide the actor with the tools to prepare to go onstage with the freedom to be completely involved with the play as it unfolds. A practical handbook for the actor.

Front 100

Auditions

Back 100

Need a resume with headshot to try out, collecting the sides. Callbacks follow preliminary.

Front 101

Improvisation

Back 101

Useful in actor training and in rehearsals to free the actor's imagination and to strengthen concentration. "Spontaneous Intervention". Used in exercises and games.

Front 102

George II

Back 102

Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. Producer/director. Transformed the Duchy of Meiningen's court theatre in Germany into an example of scenic historical accuracand lifelike acting.

Front 103

Andre Antoine

Back 103

Director. Founding member of the Theatre Libre(Free theatre in France).

Front 104

Elie Kazan

Back 104

Director. Acted in group theatre's productions of Clifford Odets', Waiting for lefty, Paradise Lost, and Golden Boy. Established selected realism as the dominant American theatrical style in the 1950's.

Front 105

Julie Taymor

Back 105

Director. Utilized puppets, masks, movement, and a musical score sun in Latin and Spanish. First maor work was Way of Snow.

Front 106

Design conferences

Back 106

Six months before casting and rehearsals, the director selects a design team for the production. The early work is largely between the director and designers of sets and costumes.

Front 107

The Ground Plan

Back 107

Directors and scene designers agree upon a ground plan that defines the size and shape of the playing space, including walls, windows, furniture, doors, stairs, platforms and so on.

Front 108

Assistand Director

Back 108

Attends production meetings, coaches actors, and rehearses special or problem scenes.

Front 109

Stage managers

Back 109

Compile the Promptbook. Prepare rehearsal schedules, record stage business, blocking, lighting, sound, and other cues.

Front 110

Collaborative approach

Back 110

Directors and actors working together in rehearsals to develop movement, gestures, character relationships, stage images, and line interpretations.

Front 111

Preplanned approach

Back 111

Some directors use early rehearsal to block the play. In blocking rehearsal, the ector goes through each scene, working with the actors on when to enter or exit, where to stand or sit, and which lines to move on.