Theatre

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Play

Back 1

the text as the author(s) wrote it. It exists as literature, but not yet as theater.

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Production

Back 2

the collaborative efforts of a group of artists that create a living embodiment of the Play for an audience to see.

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Performance

Back 3

the execution of the planned Production at one moment for one audience.

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Archetype

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character types that appear in many different literary forms across time, place, andculture.

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Three essential things about the natureof theater

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–The Actors and Audience are live and inthe same place.

–The Audience must be aware that they arean audience.

–Any act of theatre is ephemeral, itexists only as it is being performed, and can never be repeated exactly.

–Theatre is a collaborative art, requiringthe creative input and labor of many artists, and of the audience.

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Willing Suspension of

Disbelief

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The ability to give ourselves over to thestory and believe in the world of the play and it’s characters.

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Aesthetic Distance

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The ability to separate the world of the play from reality.

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Plot

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The structure and action of the play. What happens and how you find out about it.

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Character

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those who undertake the action of the play.

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Protagonist

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•the central character of the play.

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Antagonist

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those who or that which opposes the protagonist.

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Foil

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characters who, by their nature andactions, provide a contrast or counterpoint to the Protagonist.

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Theme

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The overall statement, point, or idea of the play

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Diction

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the literary character of the text, it’s language and tone.

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Music

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•all of the audible content of the production.

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Spectacle

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all of the visual elements of the production.

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Conventions

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- anunspoken agreement between performers and audience. It leads to an understanding about the waytheatre is performed and what the performance means.

- commontheatre practices who’s meanings are understood by both artists and audiences.

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Ideas

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–Any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness or activity

–A thought, conception, or notion

–An impression

–An opinion, view, or belief

–A plan of action; an intention.

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Creativity

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the ability to generate new ideas.

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Divergent

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trying to remember as many solutions as

possible

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Convergent

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trying to arrive at a single solution

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Imagination

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-the fuel for creativity

-_________ is needed both by Theatre Artists and Theatre Audiences.

AllTheatre Artists engage their ________ when practicing their various crafts.

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Muse

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forartists, this term refers to a source of inspiration

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Improvisation

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theart of developing a story or dialogue in the moment.

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Foreshadowing

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Hints and clues to a future plot twist that the author includes, but that arenot obvious to the audience until the twist occur.

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Self- consciousness

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can be deadly to an Actor’s Career, but self awareness is a vital tool in learning and executing their craft.

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Dual consciousness

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–An actor’s ability to simultaneously think both about the reality of theircharacter’s situation on stage, their physical and emotional state and actions,and to think about their responsibilities as an actor to remember their lines,blocking, and other business.

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Catharsis

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a release or purging of emotions.

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Structure of a joke

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-Start with a set-up which establishes a Premise. -Then deliver the Punch-line

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Joke

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Depends heavily on rhythm and tempo

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Genre

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•ONEway of classifying or talking about plays.

______ isculturally specific

The_______ that apply to Western Theater may not apply to theatre from othertraditions.

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Traditional Tragedy

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–Actionserious in nature and significant in scope.

–focused on those with high social position, with significantpower/responsibility.

–CentralCharacters are caught in Tragic Circumstances

-ends sadly with loss

-goal is catharsis

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Tragic Verse

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-what tragedy is written in

-Use ofHeightened language helps express the heightened situations and emotions ofthese characters.

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Tragic irretrievability

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pointwhere there is no honorable resolution

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Modern Tragedy

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•createdfrom the 19th Century onward.

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Heroic Drama

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–Similarto Traditional Tragedy in it’s Characters (High Status), Diction (Verse), andPlot (extreme situations)

- EndsHappily rather than with Loss.

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Bourgeois/Domestic

Drama

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–Theseplays are serious dramas about regular people in heightened, but believablecircumstances.

–Theendings vary between happy and sad.

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Bourgeois

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people of the lower and middle classes

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Domestic

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of or centering around the home or family

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Comedy

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-reflects our hopes, needs, and desires

-Oftenmore current/topical than tragedy.

-Relyon exaggeration or ignoring of expected

realities of probability, cause andeffect, and

logic.

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Comic Premise

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•anidea or concept that turns our normal expectations of how things should beupside-down.

•Allowsfor exaggeration and incongruity, the unexpected and the unbelievable.

•Sets up the comic action

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Farce

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-sub genre of comedy that is a fastmoving, physical comedy. Often involves mistakes/mistaken identity and sexualmaneuvering/misbehavior.

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Romantic Comedy

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–reflectsthe struggles of lovers to be together, ends happily.

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Comedy of Manners

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mocksthe pretentions of those who seek to enforce cultural conventions

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Satire (political comedy)

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–Oftendesigned to shock or mock those in power or those who benefit from the currentpower structure.

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Parody

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mockeryby exaggerated imitation or counterpoint. Mocks the form and content of other art.

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Tragicomedy

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–Retainsome of the characteristics of both Comedy and Tragedy.

–Allowsfor the serious implications of comic actionAnd/Or

–Thecomic (often ironic) results of serious action.

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Melodrama

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-Characterizedby extreme emotion.

-Usuallycontain a moral lesson.

-EndsHappily, with Good triumphant and Evil punished.

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Structure

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How the story is told

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Climatic Structure

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•Playbegins at Point of Attack

includes:

-IncitingIncident- the moment where the action of the play begins. Our dramatic conflict is established.

-RisingAction-Complications ensue, action occurs, and things are revealed .

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Climatic Structure: Falling Action/Denoument

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•theresults of the climax are established, change takes hold, loose ends are tiedup.

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Climax

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•thepoint of maximum dramatic conflict/crisis. The point at which something must change.

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Episodic Structure

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•EarlyPoint of Attack, picks up a story or stories early on.

•Trackssame characters through their stories.•Eventsof each episode not necessarily related by direct cause and effect

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Serial Structure

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•Scenesdo not necessarily have the same characters from scene to scene.

•Plotsmay or may not interlink.

•Essentiallyshort bits or stories, linked by Theme and Idea rather than by Plot orCharacter.

•Scenesmay or may not play out in a linear time line. May jump around in time.

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Style

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•-themanner in which something is done.

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Neoclassicism

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•Had atendency to codify and make rules out of things that were tendencies, but NOTrules, in Greek and Roman writing.

•Aninvention of critics that created the dramaturgy of the era, not an inventionof the playwrights or working theater artists.

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Romanticism

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•Endof the1700’s, dominatedthe first half of the1800’s.

•Unsurprisingmove away from Elitist theatre in an era where Revolution saw the defeat ofMonarchy and a general questioning of the social order.

•Celebratedthe natural world and valued intense emotion and individuality

•Soughtto free theatre from the strict Neoclassical formula.

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Realism in Playwrights

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•Soughtto create drama without abstraction or convention

•wereinterested in using theater to examine humanity and real life.

•wereinfluenced by some new ideas that were coming into prominence in this era.

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Realism in Production

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–Beganuse of box sets

•Threedimensional scenery designed to both look like and work like actualenvironments.

•Actorscould now play the whole space, and interact with the scenery.

•Illusionof perspective-painted sets replaced with settings that looked and functionedas much like they would in real life as possible.

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Major European Realists

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•HenrikIbsen-The Father of Realism

•AntonChekov- The Highpoint of Realism

•GeorgeBernard Shaw

-english author known for his witty dialouge

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Symbolism

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•Startedas a movement in art, poetry andliterature. Picked up steam in Theaterin the 1890’s. Very big in France andRussia.

•Playwrights(and other artists) who work in a Symbolist style search for truth by lookingto the internal life of people.

•Characteristicemphasison an internal life of dreams and fantasies, and how those things revealtruth about us as people.

•Returnof some poetic language, non-realistic acting styles and visuals.

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Expressionism

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•partof a movement that spanned many forms of art.

•Startedin Germany, also popular for a while in the US.

•Deliberatelyskews reality in order to reveal deeper truths about humanity.

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Absurdism

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•Emergedafter World War II

•Influencesby the horrors of the Holocaust, Atomic Weapons, and the general horror of waron such a massive scale.

•Emphasison the Chaos and ultimate absence of logic or meaning in life.

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Renaissance

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•Rebirth,in this case, a rebirth of interest in Arts and Learning in Western Europe.

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Aside

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•shortremarks to the audience by a character.

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Soliloquy

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•alonger passage (sometimes called a monologue) expressing the characters innerthoughts and emotions.