theatre midterm

The kabuki theatre is marked by

actor-centered tradition with extraordinary costumes and makeup, lavish sets and scenic devices and moving domestic and historic plays all developed to draw in popular audiences and spotlight the talents of celebrated performers. explicit, extroverted, brash

An audience member's response to a theatrical event might be influenced by their

age, culture, race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, education, and economic or social class

Complex characters who transcend the particular circumstances of their drama to speak across the ages are called

archetypal characters

Documentary theatre is always

based on a primary source

The plot of a play includes

beginning, middle & end

episodic structure

characterized by an early point of attack in the story and a proliferation of characters and events not necessarily related by cause and effect including subplots and parallel plots (think shakespeare)

Which of the following describes serial structure?

composed of a series of scenes that don't follow a continuous story or even include the same characters. Each scene may be an independent vignette that could, under other circumstances stand on its own. Often thematically related and give a varied perspective on a subject rather than through the progression of a single story

Realism is a style that resulted from the

confluence of forces: the ideas of naturalist Charles Darwin that presented human beings as objects of scientific study; the birth of sociology and psychology, which sought to objectively observe human behavior and a surge of playwrights interested in applying these ideas to the theatre

Agitprop theatre attempts to

create political support for movements

Operetta

created by jacques offenbach, borrows many features from opera and incorporates dance, farce and clowning to tell a simple story always culminates in romance fulfilled. often satiric in nature, it was readily accesible popular entertainment form

Japanese Kyogen

"mad words" is a comic form that shares the noh stage but has its own acting, speaking and costuming conventions. Deals with the concrete world and exposes everyday foibles, conflicts, and follies

Climactic structure is characterized by

A tight knit form that limits the scope of events, the time in which they transpire and the number or characters

Which of the following is a term that is used to discuss how much critical detachment a spectator has from the play

Aesthetic distance

Multiculturalism

Calls for a respect for neighboring cultures living under the same political system

Which of the following is an example of a psychological character?

Hamlet, Blanche duBois & Willy Loman

Japanese Noh Theatre

Highly stylized ritualistic form in which a few pages of text can take hours to perform. Deals with metaphysical realm

Wole Soyinka's Work

Marries African and Western European influences as it addresses Nigeria's evolving political conditions, legacy of colonialism and the power of its rituals and Yoruba belief in the flow between past, present and future. A Dance of the Forests

Verfremdungseffekt is defined as

a separation of the audience emotionally from the dramatic action

Labanotation is

developed in 1920s by rudolph laban- uses principles of space, anatomy and dynamics to record all kinds of movement not just dance

Isben created a "realistic stage" by

doing away with devices such as direct address to the audience and poetic soliloquies and by creating fully developed characters whose actions are motivated by heredity, environment and internal psychology

Agnes de Mille's choreography in Oklahoma

drew on her classical training, added a psychological element and helps tell the story

The term avant-garde refers to

early 20th century rejections of art forms of the past as not reflecting the dynamism of the modern technological world. Want to destroy the illusionary realistic stage world and the convention of the fourth wall and foster an active interaction with the audience

Which of the following best describes the progression of events in a play with a climactic plot?

exposition, complication, crisis, climax and resolution

Commedia dell'arte

form resembling ancient mime and early Atellan farce with masks, stock characters and imrpovisation

Storytellers of West Africa are called

griots

According to Aristotle, the best tragedies

have a tragic character, tragic miscalculation, recognition, reversal of fortune, pathos, pity and fear and catharsis

Performance traditions

impermanent and change over time, often present a heightened theatricality (music, dance, movement, masks, elaborate makeup), each has its own sets of conventions that influence acting, training, writing, design and directing and each has its own history but often there is no clear point of origin

Concert parties are a(n)

in regions of english-speaking africa, a form of variety entertainment evolved in the 1920s, touring in west africa- hybrid combination of african culture and american and european entertainments include musical numbers, brief topical sketches and female impersonators

The well-made play

includes foreshadowing, inciting incident and a cliffhanger. Also called "tune in next week" structure because well-made play is structured like many television dramas or murder mysteries

Tragicomedy is a

ironic perspective on life that perceives the opposing elements of comedy and tragedy as coexisting in dramatic tension at all times

The term "orientalism" refers to the

kind of exoticizing of Asian arts and now implies an imposition of a Western perspective on Asian forms

Universal properties of theatre

live, ephemeral, collaborative and a synthesis of many arts

A nineteenth century performance that involved white actors wearing blackface to depict racial stereotypes was a(n)

minstrel show

Which of the following was one of the first forms of theatre to explore multicultural textual elements and themes in America?

musical theatre

Brecht rejected climactic structures because

of the close emotional involvement with the characters it elicits from the audience and its denouments that leave the audience feeling that all has been resolved in the world

Aristotle's poetics

outline what Aristotle considered the essential qualities of a tragic text- most importantly underlines a unified climactic plot

The Bread and Puppet Theatre

political protest puppetry- started in the 1960s by Peter Schumann to protest the vietnam war

Postmodernism

poses a world of contradiction and instability, with no grand scheme of meaning or universal understanding

The chorus in ancient Greek theatre

provides exposition, commented on the action, engaged with the characters and represented the citizenry. Most importantly, it provides spectacle and movement

Neoclassical Tragedy

require 3 unities of time, place and action that limited tragedies to a single day, in one location and a single climactic plot. introduces verismilitude: the appearance of truth- not realism but an idealized truth & use of tragedy to teach moral lessons

Comedy likely evolved from

rituals that rejoiced in the regeneration of the earth at springtime and the ensuing renewal of hope

Theatrical Conventions are

rules of conduct and understood communication codes

In commedia, a lazzi is

set bits of comic stage business to which an actor could turn for comic effect

Satire is

sometimes comedy is used as a form of attack on the follies or institutionalized vices of a particular society. marked by irony and wit, satire can explore pressing social issues and provoke debate. successful satire is always topical and its subjects are immediately recognizable to its audience- usually has a moral or critical position

A book musical is a

story told through spoken text and song

rasa

tastes or flavors that contrast and complement each other. good sanskrit dramas expected to have all 8 of the rasa- love, mirth, sadness, anger, heroism, fear, disgust and wonder although, one rasa or mood should dominate

Martin Esslin coined the term "theatre of the absurd" is an example of

the critic as the interpreter

Catharsis is

the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions

Carnival's influences include

theatrical form born in pagan europe, traveled through colonization to the Caribbean and Latin America, where African slaves transformed it into an expression of freedom

Performance traditions

theatrical forms whose staging, music, dance, characterization, masks, and acting are passed from generation to generation as a totality of expression. Performance traditions are usually rooted in the values and beliefs of the community, are often linked to religious ritual and sometimes involve total community participation

Brecht wanted his audience to

understand the political, social or moral message of his work

The musical The Scottsboro Boys took risks because it

used the ministrel show's racist form as a distancing frame for the events and as a means to decry the racism the story portrayed

Performance studies is an academic discipline that

views theatre as only one of a continuum of events that possess "performative" elements like religious rituals, storytelling, sports events, games, striptease, parades, lectures and political conventions

It is difficult to write tragedy in the modern era because

we have no fixed value systems against which to measure human action

Seneca's tragedies

were intended to be read not performed. took stories from greek myths. often includes ghosts demanding vengeance for their deaths with murder and mayhem as the result- known as revenge plays