The Drama Club

1) What are the setting and the time period of this play, and how do you see these factors (given circumstances) impacting the lives of the characters? Be sure to include the name of the play. (5 points) "As You Like it," a play composed by William Shakespeare was initially set in the time period of the early 1600’s; however, thanks to a clever ingenious director of this play, Rick Lombardo was able to give the production a slightly modern twist. Due to the initial time period set by William…

This essay is a comparative study of two Absurd plays. But before we start with the essay let’s look at what the Theatre of the Absurd is. The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ is a post- World War II concept. The first and the most important playwrights of this movement were Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Arthur Adamov and Jean Genet. These plays focus on or represent the absurdity of human existence. Absurdity in this context means disharmony or meaninglessness. This style of writing was first used by…

To what extent can Renaissance drama be said to subvert ideas of social AND/OR moral order? During the Renaissance, plays and drama were extremely popular. Plays were at once available to an audience of all social classes simultaneously and provided a public platform for the spread of commentary on aspects of social, political and religious life in Elizabethan England. Playwrights would frequently use the stage to comment upon the world around them. Without a doubt, the most well-known…

Through non-conventional theatre, in the form of immersive theatre, the performative characteristics of scenic design are scrutinized. By transcending traditional dramatic performances, yet still incorporating similar characteristics taken from conventional theatre, immersive theatre stimulates the spectator’s theatrical experience while still making it new yet familiar. It is crucial to present or evoke an action through the depiction of fictional events, or at least, through the embodiment of…

In Tale-Danda Karnad breathed a different kind of life into the poetic texts and historical events by developing a dramatic structure that would ‘explain’ the relation of poetry and religious mysitism to political economy and social radicalism and in the english version of the play he incorporated a generous selection of old and new translations of the vachanas by Ramanujan. The Fire and the Rain was originally written in kannada [Agni mattu Male (1995)] but rendered immediately into english for…

The word personality is originally from the Latin word called “persona”. It means a theatrical mask worn by performers in order to project different roles or identities. Personality can be defined as the combination of qualities or characteristics which form an individual’s unique character that different from others. The differences are referring to the individuals’ pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving. In order to explain personality, it can be ranging from genetics to the roles of…

Henrik Johan Ibsen has a prominent place in the genre of realism in theatre. He is called the father of realism and modern drama. He was born on March 20, 1828 in Skien, Norway to Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. His father was a general merchant. Henrik Ibsen’s childhood was full of poverty because of his father’s financial setbacks. At the age of 15, he stopped going to school and joined as an apprentice in an apothecary in Grimstad. The poverty had a strong influence on his plays. He had…

Considered one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman can be seen as praise to a man who, while trying to bring his family into grace, falls in a tragic life. As Centola (25) says, “Miller’s play tells the story of a man who, on the verge of death, wants desperately to justify his life.” Willy is a complex and fascinating man who gradually destroyed himself with false hopes and beliefs. He is a tragic man who, in his whole life, has believed that he would…

Arthur Miller provides audience with a different kind of experience in Death of a Salesman. He not only provides us with the insight into complex human conditions but also tells us about the false reality that most of the people perceive. Primarily this play does not seem any different from other plays as it involves the basic three act structure comprising of exposition, confrontation and climax. The unique thing about this play is the way Miller has used time and space. He made the characters…

Introduction Macbeth is considered to be Shakespeare’s one of the most outstanding tragedies. Scholars widely agree that Macbeth was written around the year 1606 and to support the idea ‘the strongest indication that Macbeth was composed in the summer of 1606 concerns its allusion to a ship named the “Tiger” which has sailed to the near east en route to Aleppo, an ancient trading city in Syria’(Feldman: 213). Shakespeare’s main source to write Macbeth was Chronicles of England, Scotland, and…