Drama Flashcards
Primary and secondray text
Primary text: dialogue that takes place between dramatic figures
Secondary text: stage directions, not spoken parts which people that see the play have no access to
how are dramatic text different from narrative texts
Presentness
Plurimedial
Collective and ephemeral process
explain the Absolute nature of Dramatic texts
No mediating communication system, no narrator = absulute in it self.
we don’t have someone who tells us thoughts of dramatic characters.
* No narrator (only Chorus in ancient drama.) * No inner toughts (sometimes use of monologue/or soliloquy for this) * Information is pervided tough: Interpersonal dialogue form
what is the Collective and ephemeral process of drama
Collective = we go to the theater together
Ephemeral: no performance is like the one before
explain phisters graph for drama, how does it differ from his graph over narrative texts
external communication system:
s4 and R 4 emperial author and scutual reader
s3 and r3 implied reciever and author
Mediating communication system (no S2 narrator in drama and no fictional adresse)
S2 = fictional narrator
R2 = fictional adressee
Internal communication system
S/R = fictional characters
Narrative function transferred to internal communikation system by means of the type of questions and answers from S/R1 designed to inform the audience more info about protagonist then protagonist self.
Monologue:
Dialogue by single character. addressed to no one, used to express thoughts. (other characters are on stage)
Soliloquy:
only one character on stage talking
Aside
character says something to either other character or audience which character C cannot here.
Line by line
exchange: specific kind of dialogue. Every character speaks only one line
- Can create a monotony effect. (monotone)
Report by messenger
recount events that happens before the action that currently takes place. Its about something in the past
Viewing of the walls:
Teichoscopy or teichoscopia
characters tells other character = this and this is happening right now but off stage (present time)
Discrepant awareness:
The audience knows more than the characters on stage.
Dramatic irony:
ironic contradiction created when internal and external communications system conflict with each othe
eg: romeo is looking a juliet, he thinks she looks as tough she is still sleping. He is here a victom of irony - the audience knows she looks alive because she is alive. So its ironic. Note romeo is not the perpretrator of dramatic irony but the victim.
How do you (esprecially in exposition) make sure the audience know what they need to know
The characters ask questions
Classical three unities from Aristotle’s
- The unity of action: A play should have one main action it follows with no or few subplots.
- The Unity of place: A play should cover single physical place, should not attempt to compress geography.
- Unity of time: The action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours (so that the audience can follow and understand)
Mythos
myth is a hole of e certain magnitude.
Plot must be complete and hole, and have recognizable with clear beginning middle and end.
Catharsis
Efter at have set en tragedie skal publikum gennemga en rennelse, after arousing pitty and fear.
It’s a form of solutions to why people want to be entertained by watching horrible events (having a good cry)
Dramatic Arc: by Gustav Freytag
- Expostion: inciting moment
- Rising action/or complication (steigerung)
- Climax (following this is the peripety (turning point)
- Falling action or reversal
- Denoument (comedy - solution) or catastrophe (tragedy)
Open form/Closed form
not all plays rely on classical unities of dramatic arc.
Open form = godot
Tragedy:
- Mimesis or imitation of serious heroic and complete action
- Protaganist fortune turn from good to bad
- Action incites pity (elos) and fear (phobos)
- We empathise with the suffering of hero and their recognition (anagnorisis) of mistake/guilt.
Introduction of catharsis
Comedy:
- `Ordinary people of the middle or lower classes as flat types with stereotypical behavior (comdia del arte)
- Characters reveal short coming, make mistakes, are frustrated by failure
- Action marked by stock elements = mistaken identity, surprising turn
- In general poetic justice prevails in the end = person we empathize with have happy ending.
Discrepant awareness:
The audience knows more than the characters on stage.
how is a play Synesthetic
(visual, acustic, olfactory)
How is a play Ephemeral:
each permance is unique and singular
Suspension of disbelief:
you know that what you are seeing isn’t real in the theater. Its an act. But we decide to belive its real for a limited amound of time.
Chanels for conveing inforamtion:
Visual, acoustic, or. Smell
Physicality of drama
No play is the same - there are real people and real bodies, its not like you can just do another take. Also the audience if you sit next to someone who sneezes the hole time that influences your experience
Open-air Stage forms:
- Ancient Greece: Anphitheater (semi circle)
- Middle Ages: Pageants a wagon
- Renaissance (eraly modern period) : apron stage Surrounded by three sides
Stage forms 17th cent.
Indoor:
- Proscenium Arch (pictures frame stage = kukkassse scene) with the invisible fourth wall
- Other forms include:
- Theater in the round
- Thrust stage: publikum 3 sider
- Traverese: publikum hojre og venstre
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
- Berliner ensemble
- Verfremdung (alienation effect) - actor can stand outside the character
- Epic theatre (as oposed to dramatic thatre/montage rather than stringent plot.
Anti-naturalistic
want to make theater political
Samuel Becket (1906-1989)
Irishman living in France, wrote in French
* Shaped theatre of the absurd * Project the irrationalism, helplesness, absurdity of life in dramatic forms that reject realistic settings, locial reasoning and a coherently evolving plot Uses eddying and pointless dialogue to project the alienation and tragic anguish of human existence.
round characters vs flat characters
Round characters:Round characters are like real people.
They have complex, multi-dimensional personalities.
They are capable of growing and changing.
They are often, but not always, major characters.
Flat characters:They have one-dimensional personalities.
They represent or portray one particular characteristic.
They are a type, e.g. the jealous lover, the fool or the grumpy, old man.
They are often, but not always, minor characters.
Metatheatrical
meta - theater
theater on theater
The absurd definition: Camus (French):
word/universe
humanity
a philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless and that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe
World/universe: is irrational and meaningless
- Lack of meaning, irrational, arbitrary (no faite, you are here by chance), the universe is indifferent to you, incomprehenceble to you
Humanity: meaning seaking/making creatures which dosent allaine with the universe. And that is absurd.
So the fact that we excist in a world that has no meaning but we seek this meaning.
The anguish of human exsistence. In searching for oder.
Theater of the absurd:
- Absurdity
- There is no meaning (with life)
- Flat characters
- After WW 2
- No God
- Reject realistic setting, or plot
- Helplessness
Actions are cyclical (events happen again and again)
Alienations effect:
Making the audience aware that they are in a artificial play.
The actor can step out of the role.
Phister communication model
se evt. PP to explain
Chanels: olfactory, acustic, visual
Codes: verbal non verbal
Sender: Figure, stage
Information: (durative or non durative)
Pfisters graph: Pluramediality of drama
Repertorie of codes and channels
Chanels for conveing inforamtion: Visual, acoustic, or smell
Clear preference for visual and acustic.
Codes: both verbal and non-verbal
Sender:
Who/what sends us information
Figure: speaks information /
stage: se certain things like props.
Information:
Voice, intonation… (linguistic and paralinguistic) (Paralinguistics arethe aspects of spoken communication that do not involve words.)
Duration: Is the information avalible trough out the play or just briefly on the stage.
