Theatre Appreciation

Common structure in musical theatre requires that every song have a segment that involves the chorus.

False

Minor characters in a play are always written as basic stock characters.

False

The term "robot" was actually first used in an early twentieth-century play by Neil Simon.

False

When nonhuman characters are written into a script it is typically because the producers do not want to create a stage prop when an actor can solve the problem nicely.

False

The main representative character in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House who to this day serves as a symbol of the modern woman is

Nora Helmer

A tableaux structure begins with characters arranged in a visual stage picture and the action, frequently nonverbal, proceeds from that tableaux until the end of the scene.

True

As seen in some of Chekhov's plays it is possible to combine the climactic and the episodic forms.

True

It has become more common in contemporary plays for characters within the play to "step out of their character" and also serve the function of a narrator by speaking directly to the audience about the action.

True

Narrators in the most traditional sense remain outside the action of the play and typically comment on the action communicating directly with the audience.

True

Patterns as structure exist not only in dance but also in some plays, where the characters' movement and circumstances can be repetitive, as in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

True

We know that playwrights frequently write plays about a single family in classic climactic structure and they will also occasionally create two contrasting characters that are siblings or husband and wife in order to allow character traits to stand out more dramatically in the action.

True

An intellectual or artistic movement that breaks with tradition and therefore seems ahead of its time is called ________; literally, it means "advance guard in a military formation."

avant-garde

The fifteen performers who sang, danced, chanted, and sometimes interacted with the main characters in a classic Greek drama are called the

chorus

The technical term for revelation of background material in a play is

exposition

Another word that means "contrast in the connection of scenes" is

juxtaposition

A selection and arrangement of scenes from a story is called a(n)

plot

A repetition or reenactment of a proceeding or a transaction which has acquired special meaning is called a

ritual

Minor characters are

typically used as a dramatic device by the playwright to move the action along. typically used to be supportive or confidante-like characters for the central character in a play. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern inShakespeare's Hamlet, for example.

Harlequin

was at the heart of most plot complications in the commedia dell'arte.