Drama

1. Drama An Introduction

2. What is Drama • Drama comes from Greek words meaning "to do" or "to act.” • A play is a story acted out. • Plays show people going through some eventful period in their lives, seriously or humorously. • The speech and action of a play recreate the flow of human life. A play comes fully to life only on the stage.

3. Drama is literature enacted in front of an audience by people who play the parts of the characters • The first literary dramas were created long ago in ancient Greece and may have come from reenactments of ritual sacrifices • The word Tragedy comes from the Greek tragoidia

4. Characters • Characters are important in plays • Without the character there is no story, no climax, no resolution • The audience watches a play because the characters/actors promise to take the audience on a journey to experience a story's fulfillment. • The audience is invested in the characters and cares what happens to them.

5. Types of Stages • Arena Stages – open-air amphitheaters where plays were enacted in classical times • Also known as Theater in the Round – audience stands or sits around a circular or semicircular open space • Thrust Stages – A platform that jutted into an open area open to the sky – middle ages and Elizabethan England • Proscenium Stage (Picture Stage) – a box box-like area with three walls (or curtains) and a ‘fourth wall’ through which the audience views the action – nineteenth and twentieth centuries

6. Types of Dramas • In a strict sense, plays are classified as being either tragedies or comedies. • The broad difference between the two is in the ending. • Comedies end happily. • Tragedies end on an unhappy note. • Tragic or comic, the action of the play comes from conflict of characters how the stage people react to each other. These reactions make the play.

7. Tragedy • Tragedies end on an unhappy note. • The tragedy acts as an emotional purge. • It arouses our pity for the stricken one and our terror that we ourselves may be struck down. As the play closes we are washed clean of these emotions and we feel better for the experience.

8. A classical tragedy tells of a high and noble person who falls because of a "tragic flaw," a weakness in his own character. • A domestic tragedy concerns the lives of ordinary people brought low by circumstances beyond their control. Domestic tragedy may be realistic seemingly true to life or naturalistic realistic and on the seamy side of life.

9. Comedy • Comedies end happily • A romantic comedy is a love story. • The main characters are lovers; the secondary characters are comic. In the end the lovers are always united. • Farce is comedy at its broadest. Much fun and horseplay enliven the action.

10. The comedy of manners, or artificial comedy, is subtle, witty, and often mocking. • Sentimental comedy mixes sentimental emotion with its humor. • Melodrama has a plot filled with pathos and menacing threats by a villain, but it does include comic relief and has a happy ending. It depends upon physical action rather than upon character probing.

11. Elements of Drama • Playwright – The author of the play • Script – The written form of the play – contains stage directions and dialogue • Dialogue – the speech of the actors in the play • Monologue – long speech given by actors • Soliloquy – a speech given by a lone character on stage • Aside – a statement intended to be heard by the audience or by a single other character but not other characters on the stage

12. Dramatic Monologue • A dramatic monologue is a type of lyrical poem or narrative piece that has a person speaking to a select listener and revealing his character in a dramatic situation

13. Acts & Scenes • Act – a major division of a drama • Plays of ancient Rome and Elizabethan England were generally divided into five acts • In the Modern Era Three-act and One-act plays are common • Scene – subdivisions of an act • Stage Directions – notes provided by the playwright to describe how something should be presented or performed (usually printed in italics and enclosed in brackets or parentheses • The Spectacle – all the elements of the drama presented to the senses of the audience (the lights, sets, curtains, costumes, makeup, music, sound effects, properties, and movements of the actors

14. The Spectacle • Stage – the area in which the action is performed • Set – everything placed upon the stage to give the impression of a particular setting, or time & place. Often include walls, furnishings, and painted backdrops • Properties – items that can be carried on and off the stage by actors or manipulated by actors during scenes. i.e. books, fans, gavels, and walking sticks • Sound effects – sounds introduced to create mood or indicate the presence of something, i.e. thunder, telephones, sirens • Blocking – the act of determining how actors will move on the stage

15. The Parts of a Stage

16. Sources • History of Drama • http://litera1no4.tripod.com/dramahistory.html#History%20of%20Drama • Drama • by: Ronald Allan Chionglo • http://litera1no4.tripod.com/drama.html • Elements of Drama • by: Christina Sheryl L. Sianghio • http://litera1no4.tripod.com/elements.html • Literature and the Language Arts: Birch Level (296-297)