Dramatic Terms Flashcards
What is an Act in a play?
A major division in a play. An act can be subdivided into scenes.
What is an Antagonist?
A character or force against which another character struggles.
What defines an Antihero?
A protagonist or central character who lacks the qualities typically associated with heroism.
What is an Aside?
Words spoken by an actor directly to the audience, but not ‘heard’ by the other characters on stage.
What is Blocking in drama?
Movement patterns of actors on the stage, usually planned by the director to create meaningful stage pictures.
What is a Catastrophe in a play?
The action at the end of a tragedy that initiates the denouement or falling action of a play.
What is Catharsis?
The purging of the feelings of pity and fear. According to Aristotle, the audience should experience catharsis at the end of a tragedy.
What is a Character in drama?
An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Dramatic characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change).
What is a Chorus in Greek tragedy?
A group of characters who comment on the action of a play without participating in it.
What is the Climax of a play?
The turning point of the action in the plot of a play and the point of greatest tension.
What is Comedy in drama?
A dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.
What is Comic Relief?
Comic relief serves a specific purpose: it gives the spectator a moment of ‘relief’ with a light-hearted scene after a succession of intensely tragic dramatic moments.
What is Conflict in drama?
The conflict between opposing forces in a play can be external (between characters) or internal (within a character) and is usually resolved by the end of the play.
What is a Complication in a play?
An intensification of the conflict in a play.
What are Literary Conventions?
Defining features or common agreement upon strategies and/or attributes of a particular literary genre.
What is a Cyclic Plot?
A plot in which the play ends in much the same way it began, rendering the action of the play futile for the characters involved.
What does ‘intervention’ mean in the context of drama?
The Latin phrase means, literally, ‘a god from the machine.’ It refers to the use of artificial means to resolve the plot of a play.
What is ‘diction’?
The manner in which words are pronounced, a style of speaking.
What is ‘dramatic irony’?
A device in which a character holds a position or has an expectation reversed or fulfilled in a way that the character did not expect but that the audience or readers have anticipated.
What defines a ‘dynamic character’?
A character that undergoes an important change in the course of the play, such as changes in insight, understanding, commitment, or values.
What is a ‘flashback’?
An interruption of a play’s chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time-frame of the play’s action.
What are ‘flat characters’?
Relatively simple minor characters in a play.
What is a ‘foil’ in literature?
A character whose situation parallels that of the main character while contrasting in behavior, response, or character.
What is ‘foreshadowing’?
A literary technique that introduces an apparently irrelevant element early in the story, with its significance becoming clear later.
What is the ‘fourth wall’?
The imaginary wall that separates the spectator/audience from the action taking place on stage.
What does ‘gesture’ refer to in a play?
The physical movement of a character during a play.
What is a ‘linear plot’?
A traditional plot sequence in which the incidents in the drama progress chronologically.
What is a ‘monologue’?
A speech by a single character without another character’s response.
What is a ‘motif’?
A recurrent element in an artistic work that is generally tied to the themes or overall idea of the piece.
What is ‘motivation’ in character development?
The thoughts or desires that drive a character to actively pursue a want or need, known as the objective.
What is the ‘point of attack’?
The point in the story of a play where the plot begins.
What is a Prologue?
Either the action or a set of introductory speeches before the first entry of the chorus.
What are Props in a play?
Articles or objects that appear on stage during a play. Props can also take on a significant or even symbolic meaning.
What is a Protagonist?
The main character of a literary work.
What is Reversal or Peripeteia?
The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist - from failure to success or success to failure.
What are Round Characters?
He or she seems like a ‘real’ person. The round character contrasts with the flat character who serves a specific or minor literary function in a text, and who may be a stock character or simplified stereotype. If the round character changes or evolves over the course of a narrative or appears to have the capacity for such change, the character is also dynamic.
What is Satire?
A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies.
What is a Scene?
A traditional segment in a play used to indicate a change in time, location, provide a jump from one subplot to another, introduce new characters, or rearrange the actors on the stage.
What is Scenery?
The physical representation of the play’s setting (location and time period) that emphasizes the aesthetic concept or atmosphere of the play.
What is a Soliloquy?
A speech meant to be heard by the audience but not by other characters on the stage. In a soliloquy, only the audience can hear the private thoughts of the characters.
What are Stage Directions?
A playwright’s descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers as well as actors with guidance.
What is Staging?
The position of actors on stage, the scenic background, the props and costumes, and the lighting and sound effects.
What is a Static Character?
A literary or dramatic character who undergoes little or no inner change; a character who does not grow or develop.
What is a Subplot?
A secondary plot that usually shares a relationship with the main plot, either thematically or incidentally, often dealing with secondary characters in the play.
What is Subtext?
Internal motivations or responses never explicitly stated in the dialogue, but understood either by the audience or the characters themselves.
What is Suspension of Disbelief?
Accepting something as real or representing the real when it obviously is not real.
What is a Stock Character?
A recognizable character type found in many plays.
What is a Subplot?
A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot that coexists with the main plot.
What is a Tableau?
A motionless dramatic scene created by actors to depict the appearance of a moment frozen in time.
The plural of tableau is tableaux.
What is Tragedy in drama?
A type of drama in which the characters experience reversal of fortune, usually for the worse.
What is a Tragic Flaw?
A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero.
What defines a Tragic Hero?
A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and/or fate, suffers a fall from a higher station in life into suffering.
