theater final

Natural Tendency to Imitation Aristotle's idea

"Instinct to Imitate" We learn by copying and we survive if we are good at it, therefore it is human nature to enjoy copying.

epic theater

-a type of theatre used primarily by Bertolt Brecht, a German playwright who worked during WW2. Meant to instigate social change.

Noh or Nō

A Japanese classical dance drama that began in the 14th C. Uses masks. Performed on a square stage with a tree as the background. Very slow moving, sometimes called "the art of walking."

Konstantin Stanislavski

A Russian director and actor who created a new system for instructing actors performing realism. Wrote several books. His method is still the primary way we teach performers today.

Saytr

A burlesqued treatment of a mythological story performed by goat-men. Baudy, inappropriate.

Kabuki

A dance-based, musical theatre form from Japan. Romanic, sometimes erotic stories based on comic folk theatre. Uses colored, elaborate costumes, exaggerated, stylized gestures and bright makeup.

Chorus

A group of 12-15 men who recite interludes together and represent the view of society

Proscenium Arch

A picture frame-like opening dividing the audience area from the stage. Allowed for the use of perspective scenery painted on moving "wings" to create a changeable 3D backdrop for the actors. Again, popular in France and Italy, but not Spain or England, at least not in the Renaissance.

Mystery Cycles (Miracle Cycles, Passion Plays)

A religious or biblical story broken into short sections and performed by amateur actors at religious festivals. Originally produced by the church, but quickly outsourced to trade guilds in the town. Each guild would produce and perform a section of the play. Very anachronistic and included "inside jokes" understood by the local population. Performed using pageant wagons that were pulled through the town to different stations. Each guild would perform their part of the play multiple times in different locations.

Neutral Playing Space

A section of the stage void of scenery that can become anywhere that the actor says it is. Allows for multiple locations to exist on stage at the same time or for actors to be sharing the same space, but actually be in two different times or locations. Unique to the theatre. Often intentionally used by playwrights as an element of storytelling.

Tetralogy

A set of 4 plays by one author. The first three would be tragedies that thematically fit together, telling three parts of the same story. The fourth was a Satyr play meant to provide comic relief.

Sides

Actors were not provided with full scripts, but rather "sides" which contained only their lines and cue lines from the other characters so they would know when to speak.

Pit, Box and Gallery seating

Audience area with a central open area called the pit and more private divided boxes and galleries (balconies) on three sides against the walls. Develops now and lasts, with some alterations for the next 300 years or so.

Alley

Audience sits on two opposite sides of the theatre, facing each other. Scenic elements can be used on either end and the audience can view action on stage as well as the reaction of other audience members.

rome audience

Cavea-seating area on 3 sides, but larger than Greeks

Peking Opera

Chinese theatre form combining acrobatics, songs, and folk tales. Very limited scenery, but bright colored costumes and makeup. Both men and women allowed to perform, but cross dressing was common with both genders. Plays use popular songs and cover a wide variety of topics including romance, history, crime, and heroism.

The primary genres in Elizabethan England were

Comedy, Tragedy and History.

Summer Stock/Shakespeare Festivals-

During the summer months when theatre students and educators are not in school, seasonal theatres open across the country in popular tourist locations to provide theatre to vacationers. Many of these performances take place in outdoor theaters and focus on performing royalty free classics, such as Shakespeare. Theatres often show multiple plays in rotating repertory.

Natural Tendency towards Fantasy

Humans seek to reshape the world as they want it to be. Allows people to escape unpleasantries, fulfill desires that cannot be fulfilled in life, confront fears and dangers without actually being in danger, etc.

Technical Positions

Includes the carpenters, electricians, stitchers, technical director, board operators, stage managers and countless other positions.

Artistic Positions

Includes the director, designers and performers. Hired using a contract system for an individual production.

Private Theatres

Indoor theatres, smaller and more expensive, but not exclusive. The stage extended all the way across one end, and the pit contained benches. Plays took place during the day, as high windows were needed to help light the indoor theatres.

Bunraku

Japanese puppet theatre. Three puppeteers maneuver a single, 3 dimensional puppet about 2/3 the size of a real human being. The story is read/sung by a storyteller and acted out by the puppets.

Collegiate Theatre

Many college campuses have theatre degrees and produce shows within the semester as part of their educational program.

Greece stage

Orchestra-circular and approximately 60' in diameter

Public Theatres

Outdoor, freestanding structures built outside the official London city limits. They were various shapes, some round, some square or multi-sided. They had a thrust style stage extending into the pit with a permanent façade known as a tiring house behind it. Groundlings stood in the pit, while wealthier patrons could buy seats in the boxes and galleries around the sides.

Ritual

People begin to repeat actions they believe have caused desirable reactions, and rituals develop. Costumes, masks, dance, song, recitation, etc all become incorporated into the ritual and those in the civilization not performing gather to watch and support.

Storytelling and Impersonation

Perhaps it is human nature to share stories, or perhaps it is in some way part of our internal self-preservation, but we survive by sharing our experiences with others.

Shadow Puppetry

Popular in both Indonesia and China, shadow puppets are flat metal, leather or paper figures moved using sticks behind a lit screen to tell a story in silhouette.

rome stage

Pulpitum-a raised rectangular stage platform in front of the Scaena. Orchestra still exists, only a half circle, no longer used to staging, but for seating

rome Scenery

Scaena-Taller, bigger and fancier scene building with as many as 5-7 doors. Usually 2 stories high.

Greece Scenery

Skene-a building behind the stage to provide a backdrop, store props and hide offstage actors

Motivated Lighting

Stage lighting that appears to come from an actual light source, such as a lamp or chandelier on stage.

City Dionysia

The first big festival to start presenting theatre. Was in Athens and celebrated Dionysus.

Actors

The people who perform the plays. Acting requires extensive training in performance, voice, combat, improvisation and more

Greece audience

Theatron-benches or stone seating on 3 sides of the stage, built into a natural hillside

Sanskrit Drama

Traditional Indian theatre based on the Hindu religion. Performed for the aristocracy. Included dance, music and stylized symbolic gesture.

Moliere and Jean Racine

Two French neoclassical playwrights. Moliere wrote Tartuffe.

Morality Plays

Used allegorical characters to teach a moral lesson. Usually a main character named "mankind" or "everyman" must battle between good and evil tendencies to save his own soul. Religious but NOT telling biblical stories. Include characters named things like Good Deeds, Strength, and Loyalty.

short run

When a theatre runs a specific production for a limited, set number of shows, usually several weeks.

The Well-Made Play

a carefully constructed cause-and-effect crisis drama with multiple climaxes meant to increase suspense. Frequently somewhat contrived and predicable.

Light Plot

a drawing of the theatre depicting the location, type and gel color for each lighting instrument used in the production. Also tells the electricians where on stage to focus the lights.

Broadway

a general term for big budget plays and musicals produced in New York City or touring from there. Broadway functions on a long run system, where a play continues performances indefinitely until it is no longer profitable. Production is shopped out.

Commedia Dell'Arte-

a genre of semi-improvised comedic theatre with stock characters. Performed by traveling troupes of about ten professional actors. This is where we get the term slapstick. A literal slapstick was used as part of a comic bit, or lazzi, to beat the inept servant character. Troupes were based in Italy, but very popular in France.

A straight play is a play that is not

a musical or opera.

Neoclassicism

a strict set of rules for how to write a "good" play, based on, but not perhaps in the true spirit of, Aristotle and Horace. Very popular in Italy and France. Basically ignored in England and Spain. Drama should be true to life, take place in one location, in one day, with a small number of characters. Comedies should be comedies, tragedies should be tragedies and the two should mix. Characters should observe decorum and no ghosts or supernatural events should take place.

Absurdism

a term used to generally describe the work of a number of playwrights in the aftermath of the World Wars.

Musical Theatre

a theatre form or genre originally developed in the United States. Incorporates a traditional stage play, music, and dance. Songs support and progress the story line and are alternated with spoken text.

Dramaturg

a theatre historian, literary critic, educator, and more. A production dramaturg helps the director and actors by providing a context for the play. They research the history of a play, including politics, social etiquette, famous people of the time, locations or behaviors mentioned, modes of travel, meaning of obscure words and basically everything else.

Flexible Space or Blackbox

a theatre with movable seats and seating platforms that can be reconfigured into two or more seating configurations.

Proscenium

also called "end staging," the audience is viewing the stage from one side, allowing for extensive use of scenery.

The Gas Table

an innovation that came shortly after gas lighting that allowed a stage hand to dim all of the lights in a theatre from a single location.

Crisis or Climactic Dramas

are the earliest play structure we know, dating back to the Greeks. They have limited characters, one main plotline, occur over a short amount of time, and a late point of attack, meaning that the story starts close to the climax, so there needs to be a lot of exposition.

Long Run

as the populations of cities get larger, it becomes possible for a theatre to run a single show for multiple performances.

Arena

audience is on all four sides with a square or circular playing space in the center.

Tropes

call and response passages within religious services that eventually are acted out by clerics within the service. Eventually included spoken text and even stage directions, and some were performed in the vernacular instead of Latin.

Comedies

categorized as Old, Middle and New, more domestic or middle class than tragedies. Popular with the Romans. The stole and copied a lot of Greek New Comedy and made it their own.

Costume Renderings

color drawings of costumes that a costume designer provides the shop so they can create the costumes accurately.

Episodic Structure

develops in the medieval period. It starts closer to the beginning of the story, therefore covering a longer period of time. It contains two plots that reinforce each other, lots of characters and locations, and frequently a combination of tragic and comic elements.

A theatre is an

entertainment venue equipped for the presentation of films, dance, music and other types of performance.

Technical Drawings

ground plans, elevations and other detail drawings that a scenic designer provides the shop so they can build the set correctly

Directors

guides the production and makes final decisions on all design and performance aspects of the production.

Postplay

is after it is over

Samuel Beckett

is probably the most famous absurdist playwright.

Preplay

is the experience the audience has at the theatre before the play begins.

Non-Profit Regional Theatre

large theatres that exist in almost every major city. Lead by an Artistic Director. Theatres function on a short run repertory system where a season of plays are presented one after the other, while the next play is being built and rehearsed. Because of subscriptions, regional theatres are generally financially stable and can afford to take some risks and produce new or controversial material that might not sell on Broadway. Plays are produced in house.

Linear vs non-linear storytelling

linear storytelling is when the story progresses chronologically from start to finish. Non-linear is when the story jumps around in time, or tells the story backwards, uses a flashback. Something like that.

Melodrama

meaning literally "music drama." Melodramas were heightened, suspenseful, nostalgic plays with black-and-white almost stereotyped characters and a strong moral tone. They were accompanied by background music to support the drama.

All Japanese theatre forms were performed by

men only.

Tragedy

most popular and oldest, described by Aristotle in his Poetics. Performed in sets of three, as part of a Tetralogy. Main character has a tragic flaw that leads to downfall.

Corrales

open courtyard theatres used to stage secular dramas. They were rectangular, and part of an existing structure. The open courtyard provided standing room and the sides contained boxes and galleries. The 6-9 foot high stage platform was backed with a permanent façade several stories high.

theatre requires an

organized, stable, stationary society with a large population, a protected environment, moderate wealth and a shared language, preferably written.

Subscriptions

packages of tickets sold for multiple shows at the same time. Allows theatres to build a loyal audience base and gain financial stability. Most regional theatres today still use this method.

Front of House

people who work in the house or the lobby are usually refered to as front of house staff. This includes the House Manager, ushers, concessions people and bartenders, ticket sellers and box office staff.

Local color

recognizable locations added to scenery to suggest a specific place. For example, the Eiffel tower included in a skyline of Paris or a street sign reading "Broadway" in New York.

Found Space

referring to theatre being performed, not in a traditional theatre building, but rather in a location appropriate to the play's setting or aesthetics.

William Shakespeare

remains the most produced playwright ever in history. Died a wealthy and successful man, which was not common for a playwright. Known for his use of language. He uses over 21,000 different words in his plays. Also known for his complex, human characters.

"intimate spaces

small theaters

Thrust

the audience is seated on three sides of the stage, with the fourth side filled either by a wall or a proscenium. Voms provide exits from the front of the stage either through or under the audience seating. Scenic elements can be used but may not be fully visible to all audience members.

Load-In

the day or days during which the scenery and lights are moved onto the stage and set up in preparation for tech.

Christopher Marlowe

the first significant dramatist of the Elizabethan age. He is known for his beautiful dramatic verse, but he died quite young (28) in a tavern brawl. Might have been a spy.

Designers

the main areas of design are Scenery, Costume, Lighting and Sound. Designers begin with research, then join the director in creating a production concept. Ideas are discussed and developed in design meetings, and eventually final designs are presented to shops for construction.

Opera

the only lasting genre of Renaissance theatre. Began in an attempt to recreate Greek Tragedy, but eventually became a fully sung and orchestrated genre.

Playwright—

the person who "builds" the play.

Stage Manager

the person who makes the production run smoothly. In charge of scheduling, calling the show, organizing information, etc. Runs the show and maintains it once the director is gone.

Covent Garden and Drury Lane

the two major theatres in London. They burn down a lot. Oil lamps are used to light theatres now, allowing for some small attempt at lighting design, but also causing fires.

Resolution

the tying up of the loose ends, concluding the story, filling in the aftermath

Tech Week

the week before opening when the technical elements of the show are incorporated. Elements are incorporated slowly, beginning with a cue to cue rehearsal that jumps from one cue to the next. Costumes are added later during a dress rehearsal. The stage manager calls all cues through a headset and various people including stage hands, actors and board ops, execute them.

Aristotle's Elements of Drama

there are six. Plot, Characters, Theme, Language, Music and Spectacle. You may be asked to explain what these are, so check your notes or look them up.

Limiting factors

things that help shape what a production concept. Include budget/resources, theatre space, themes, facts or constraints included in the play script and other things that may limit what is possible.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

this means that the audience ignores, temporarily, that they are watching something performed by an actor and allows themselves to become invested in the characters and the story as if they are real.

Exposition

what has happened before we came in, background information we are going to need.

Conflict

whatever the fight is between the protagonist and antagonist. Usually strong reasons to build interest

Direct Address

when the actors speak directly to the audience. Sometimes called "asides." Fourth Wall-the idea that there is an invisible barrier between the performers and the audience. Plays that use "direct address" are sometimes referred to as breaking the fourth wall. Doesn't really exist until the genre of realism become popular in the late 1800s.

Climax

when the shit hits the fan.

Blocking

where the actors move on stage.

breeches roles

which allowed women to cross dress as men on stage.