THEA 101F Chapter 6

Examples of one character or group opposing another may be:

- father versus son - home team versus the visiting team - men versus women - old guard versus young turks

The playwright will typically state a problem that the characters strive to resolve:

- just before the play is taken up - immediately after the play opens

The opening scene of a play may do which of the following:

- nitiate the action of the characters - indicate the tone of the production - establish the imbalance between the characters

impediments that are put in the character's way are called: new forces or plot twists that alter the balance of power:

- obstacles - complications

German playwright Bertolt Brecht and American playwright Thornton Wilder were greatly influenced by:

-Beijing Opera -Mei Lanfang

two equal but complete ideas that illuminate the meaning of tragedy:

-Man is capable of extraordinary even limitless achievements. -The world we live in is often cruel, unjust and meaningless.

In what way might the viewpoint of the playwright help the audience understand the play?

-The playwright's viewpoint helps us perceive and interpret the actions of the characters -It tells us that the author is looking at events from a personal or unusual angle

In what way might the viewpoint of the playwright help the audience understand the play?

-The playwright's viewpoint helps us perceive and interpret the actions of the characters. -It tells us that the author is looking at events from a personal or unusual angle.

By rejecting the Aristotelian concept of play structure as inherently male oriented, feminist playwrights and philosophers offered a "new poetics" to explore a "woman's form" of drama. These include:

-creating a language that was suggestive and ambiguous -creating a contiguous dramatic form that was fragmented rather than whole or complete -cyclical forms that are open ended rather than having a single climax

The limits of time in theatre can be looked at in two ways:

-how long it takes a performance to take place -the time limits placed on the characters within the structure of the play

The two prominent periods in which tragedy found it greatest dramatic expression were:

-the Golden Age of Greece -the Renaissance

Some of the decisions the playwright will make when writing the play include:

-the order of events of the story - establishing the tone - the time and place - determining the characters

Family members are rarely used as a device to create tension between forces

False

In order to generate a contest of wills as equal as possible, the playwright will attempt to create a ___ of forces

balance

the final and most important moment in the play in which the key issues are resolved:

climax

The work of a playwright is similar to that of___?

composer or architect

Because of a series of conflicts, obstacles and complications the character(s) must resolve, a variety of ___ that build one on top of the other before reaching the climax

crises

Feminist plays often are written with a ___ structure that does not focus on a single climactic event

cyclical

complications are impediments that are put in the character's way whereas new forces or plot twists that alter the balance of power and delay the climax are called obstacles

false

What is meant by the idea that the action of the play is generally confined to a "world" of its own?

it contains a fictional universe of all the characters and events of the play

Aeschylus and Sophocles differed in the __________ in their dramatizations of the Electra story that shows the latitude dramatists have in fitting a story to their artistic purpose

order of events

The arrangement of events or the purposeful order of scenes in a play is called:

plot

Because people may see an event from their own perspective, it is critical that the playwright deliberately and directly impose their own ___ on the play

point of view

When we reflect on strongly opposed forces, we often think of the antagonist against the ___?

protagonist

Typically speaking, theatre is limited to the ___?

stage

Plot is usually based on a ___?

story

a full account of an event, or series of events, usually told in chronological order:

story

People are the ___of the drama whereas the action that defines the characters is the ___

subject and verb

Bertolt Brecht used ___ props and actions that were similar to those seen in Beijing opera in order to achieve his alienation or distancing effect

symbollic

A balance of forces means

the playwright attempts to create a relatively equal but hard fought contest

The time limit or deadline within the structure of the play is ___?

the time covered by the events of the play