Drama Flashcards
- is a story in dialogue performed by actors, on a stage before an audience.
- It is distinct from short story because of its three common key elements: plot, language and characters.
- is a composition of prose or poetry that is transformed into a performance on stage. The story progresses through interactions between its characters and ends with a message for the audience.
Drama
FIVE (5) TYPES OF DRAMA
- COMEDY
- TRAGEDY
- FARCE
- MELODRAMA
- MUSICAL DRAMA
- are lighter in tone than ordinary works, and provide a happy conclusion.
- The intention of dramatists is to make their audience laugh. Hence, they use quaint circumstances, unusual characters, and witty remarks.
COMEDY
this type of drama uses darker themes, such as disaster, pain, and death. Protagonists often have a tragic flaw — a characteristic that leads them to their downfall.
TRAGEDY
Generally, it is a nonsensical genre of drama, which often overacts or engages slapstick humor.
FARCE
- an exaggerated drama, which is sensational and appeals directly to the senses of the audience. Just like the farce, the characters are of a single dimension and simple, or may be stereotyped.
MELODRAMA
- dramatists not only tell their stories through acting and dialogue, but through dance as well as music. Often the story may be comedic, though it may also involve serious subjects.
MUSICAL DRAMA
- It means suffering; also translated as “a calamity,”
- It is “a destructive or painful act.” The English words “sympathy,” “empathy,” and “apathy” (literally, absence of suffering) all stem from this Greek word.
- is a quality of an experience in life, or a work of art, that stirs up emotions of pity, sympathy, and sorrow.
Pathos
- It is translated as “tragic error”, “tragic flaw” or “fatal flaw”.
- Caught in a crisis situation, the protagonist makes an error in judgment or action, “missing the mark,” and disaster results.
Hamartia
- It is a reversal of circumstances, or turning point.
- is the reversal from one state of affairs to its opposite.
- the change of fortune for the hero should be an event that occurs contrary to the audience’s expectations and that is therefore surprising, but that nonetheless appears as a necessary outcome of the preceding actions.
Peripeteia
“a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune.”
Anagnorisis
It is the purging of the emotions of pity and fear that are aroused in the viewer of a tragedy.
Catharsis
Six (6) Elements of Drama
- Plot
- Characters
- Thought
- Diction/Language
- Music
- Spectacle
- “What happens?”
- is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy.
- It is the arrangement of events or incidents on the stage.
- is composed of “clearly defined problems for characters to solve.”
Plot
- “Who?”
- “reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids”
- They provide the vehicle for conflict.
- They are the agents of the plot. They provide the motivations (reasons) for the events of the plot.
Characters
- “What is it all about?”
- “is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances”
- It is the reason the playwright wrote the play. The examination of “patterns of life” can be didactic or just a slice of life.
- It is the representation of the rational processes of the characters and of the values and ideas articulated in the play.
Thought
- “What is the language used?”
- “Vivid characters facing and overcoming recognizable obstacles need to express themselves in “heightened language.”
- is the expression of the meaning in words and its essence is the same both in verse and prose.
Diction/Language
- For the effects and lines (rhythm and rhyme of the speeches)
- Song holds the chief place among the embellishments.
- includes the use of sounds and rhythm in dialogs as well as music compositions that are used in the plays. The background score, the songs, and the sound effects used should complement the situation and the characters in it
Music
- It occupies the category of the mode of imitation.
- It includes all aspects of the tragedy that contribute to its sensory effects: costumes, scenery, the gestures of the actors, the sound of the music and the resonance of the actors’ voices.
Spectacle
Seven (7) Dramatic Devices
- Act
- Scene
- Dialogue
- Monologue
- Aside
- Soliloquy
- Intrigue
It is the way to divide a drama. Each __ is a group of scenes that form an important part in the story.
Act
It refers to the smaller unit of act.
Scene
It is the exchange of spoken words between two or more characters. It reveals something— attitude towards the characters with whom he or she is speaking and about the topics they are discussing and may aid in advancing the plot.
Dialogue
It is an actor’s speech delivery in the presence of other characters who do not speak but listen.
Monologue
It occurs when an actor speaks directly to the audience, the other actors on stage are supposedly unable to hear what he or she says.
Aside
It is a speech delivered by an actor when he or she is alone to express thoughts— to inform the audience of the character’s state of mind, his/her motives and intentions, or to advance the plot, create suspense, foreshadow future events or give information about others that would otherwise remain unvoiced.
Soliloquy
It pertains to a scheme designed by one of the characters. The success depends on another character’s innocence or ignorance. It is a comic form in which complicated conspiracies and stratagems dominate the plot.
Intrigue
