drama Flashcards
What is the basic definition of Drama?
The theatrical situation, reduced to a minimum, is that A impersonates B while C looks on.
-> Actors pretend to be a character, the audience watches
Drama is physical, showing > telling
What are the generic features of Drama?
- Impersonation
- Multimediality
- Performativity
- Collectivity
- Immediacy
What is Impersonation?
- in the present
- focus on the physical
- showing
- iconic: actor stand in for character
- relationships between characters
- relationships between characters & audience
What is Multimedia?
Everything is semiotic/meaningful
- Drama uses language and non-linguistic channels of communication (acoustic: language, sounds, music & visual: set, props, lighting, costumes, make-up, gestures, position, movement, posture, expressions)
- Synchronic presence of multiplicity of signs (all senses, information-packed, high audience activity, illusionistic, immersive)
What is Performativity?
- Dramatic text is not the performance!
- Text as blueprint, recipe
- Primary text (what is said by characters) vs. Secondary text (stage directions)
- Staging: variable vs. invariable elements (some match text, others are changed)
- Each performance: unique & tied to the present
Theatre studies: actual performances
English studies: dramatic text (implied performance)
What is Collectivity?
= product of multiple people
- Collectivity of production (actors, director, scene + costume designers, dramaturg)
- Collectivity of reception (audience as unique collective, collective reception vs. solitary reading, theatre as ‘cybernetic machine’ -> feedback loop
What is the Absoluteness of Dramatic texts about?
That there is no narration/mediation, only author, text & reader
act of reading a drama: author as addresser, dramatic text as message, reader as addressee
Theatre performance: individuals in production as addresser, performance as message, audience as addressee
What is Immediacy?
- performance is unmediated
- mostly showing
- unfolds in here and now
- no narrative guidance
- audience as eye witnesses, see story as it unfolds
- Exception: epic drama (=Brechtian drama; chorus in ancient drama
What is the internal and external system of communication?
- Internal SOC: character to character
- External SOC: play total to audience
- Audience needs to extract info (issue)
dramatic language is directed at both internal and external SOC
What are the related issues through the extractment of info regarding SOC?
- Need to provide info on pre-history via character’s statements (exposition)
- Need to provide info on character’s interiority in the mode of showing (soliloquy)
- Discrepant awareness (dramatic irony)
What is the Exposition?
prehistory of dramatic plot, important for understanding the play
- Isolated (all info at once) vs. integrated (in natural dialog, in pieces) exposition
- Monological (one character talks, figure within/outside story level) vs. dialogical (two+ character talk, through protatic figure or through confidante) exposition
protatic figure only exists for exposition, doesnt come up again
Dialogical exposition diminishes the rift between exposition and action/plot
What endings are there for Drama?
- Closed ending (resolution of all open questions & poetic justice)
- Open ending (some conflicts are unresolved & some questions remain unanswered)
What is Soliloquy?
- Aside: short utterance not addressed to other characters but heard by/addressed to audience (comedic)
- Soliloquy (Monolog): character alone on stage, talks to herself
What functions does Soliloquy have?
- Provides insight into character’s mind (intentions, motives, thoughts, feelings)
- Self-characterisation
- Connects scenes
- Drives plot forward
- Exposition
- Empathy
- Expectations & Suspense
What is Discrepant Awareness?
Uneven distribution of info
- either audience knows more/less than character A/ all characters or character A knows more/less than character B/all characters
- Essential tool for creating interest, suspense, empathy, drives action forward, places audience in privileged/ignorant position
- Dynamic pattern of info distribution throughout the play
What is the dramatic irony?
Audience knows more than character: Character’s comment has additional meaning which character is unaware of
King Duncan riding to castle (Macbeth) -> he thinks it is a beautiful place, we know Bro will be murdered here
What are the characteristics of a Tragedy?
- high-seriousness questions concerning meaning of life/humanity (conditio humana)
- happiness to unhappiness (peripeteia=reversal of fortune)
- Tragic inevitability–> no escape
- From ignorance to knowledge (anagnorisis)
- Noble (aristocratic) hero with tragic flaw/fatal mistake (hamartia)
- Audience: catharsis (fear& pity: cleansing effect)
- ‚High‘ genre, elevated style, noble protagonists
⚬ estates-clause: nobles in tragedies, commoners in comedies - Three unities (unity of action, of place, and of time; i.e., single action occurring in a single place and within the course of a day)
What are the characteristics of a Comedy?
- happy ending
- STORY:
⚬ Teleology towards marriage and social cohesion
⚬ Love triangles dissolve into couples
⚬ Intrigues to overcome obstacles (blocking characters get convinced, defeated)
⚬ Suggests a (good) future for the characters, new/strengthen relationships
⚬ Poetic justice (virtue is rewarded; vice is punished)
⚬ Female characters/lower classes more prominent and active than in tragedy - DISCOURSE:
⚬ Tendency to dialogue
⚬ Humour; puns tend towards fecundity and sexual innuendo - THEMES & NORMS:
⚬ Victory of younger generation (‚Spring‘) over older generation (‚Winter‘), Choices are maintained, events don‘t appear to be predestined (comic ‚evitability‘ vs. inevitability) - Less about timeless conditio humana, more about specific social groups and mores
What does the Subjective Distortion describe?
That the character’s opinion, world view are NOT the overall norm, world view of the text
A play’s underlying norm/ideology/worldview can only be understood when every aspect is considered
How does the Freudian approach treat Hamlet?
as if he was real and that he lusts after his mother + wants to kill his father
What is the simplest definition of dramatic texts?
scripts for theatrical performances (=texts that are written to be performed as plays)
theatre production, personnel and organistation are all needed
every performance is unique and independent ‘theatrical work of art’ & can never be exactly reproduced
What are the three levels of communication in dramas?
- Dramatic level (Interaction between characters on stage)
- Theatrical level (Communication between the cast and the audience)
- Level of everyday life (Social communication about the production and its relation to everyday norms)
What does the verbal communication in dramatic texts consist of?
Characters’ remarks or Dialogue
how the text is to be performed, usually in italics
Characters’ remarks constitute primary text, stage directions part of secondary text
What does the secondy text of a dramatic text consist of?
All constituent parts that are not part of the dialogue
info which character is speaking, stage directions, title of play
also dedications, prefaces, list of dramatis personae at beginning
What is the ‘alienation effect’?
giving information, it enhances aesthetic illusion
in epic theatres by Brecht
What are ‘theatre codes’?
Non-verbal sign systems of the theatre
What is ‘teichoscopy’?
Characters observe and simultaneously report events that are happening off-stage
What does the term ‘Dialogue’ refer to?
Succession of remarks and countermarks (utterances) between two or more characters
also: duologue, polylogue
but consider: they are literary constructs, don’t represent truth!
What are Dialogues good for?
- Set the action of drama in motion
- Central to characterisation
- Medium for conflict
- Clarification of opinions
- Expounding central themes
What is Soliloquy?
Character is alone on stage while speaking, regardless of any hearers
directed to speakers themselves or audience
What is a ‘Monologue’?
Character speaks alone in the explicit presence of others
form of representing consciousness
dramatic monologue is part of poetry! not drama
What does the term ‘dialogical tendencies’ refer to?
when speaker addresses an absent figure or object
What is ‘Monological aside’?
Character voices a thought which is not expressed anywhere else, only audience understands
often indicated by ‘Aside’
What is ‘dialogical aside’?
a group of initiated characters conduct a conspiratorial conversation in whispers while unnoticed by other characters on stage
usually indicated by ‘Aside to X’
What is ‘aside ad spectatores’?
Character addresses a comment directly to the audience
usually indicated by ‘Addressing the audience’
What four factors influence the behaviour of the characters and therefore the action?
- Abilities
- Needs
- Motivation
- Intention
What are anthropomorphoric figures?
Characters
figure is ficitive, not to be confused with real actor
What does the term ‘dramatis personae’ mean?
All literary characters who appear in a play
What is the configuration of characters?
All the entrances/exit of characters alters the number of characters present on stage
What are the three major factors of ‘Character perspective?
- Character’s level of knowledge
- Character’s psychological disposition
- Character’s ideological persuasions (values and norms)
What does the term ‘Type’ mean?
Character who has few specific human characteristics
two types: psychological (particular mode of human behaviour) type & social type (part of a social class or particular profession)
resemble genuine human beings
What does the term ‘individual’ mean?
Figure who has so many different features that he is a complex character (real human being almost)
character conception
What is a ‘Personification’ in Character conception?
figure who embodies single characteristic
What did Shakespeare do different to Aristotle?
His dramas have an open temporal and spatial structure
setting changes often, time is not restricted to one day
What does the term ‘word-scenery’ mean?
engages the imagination of audience by describing location of an action or refering to particular props or imaginary figures
