Final exam Flashcards
Trifles, 1916
Susan Glaspell
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, 1942/1956
Eugene O’Neill
A Raisin in the Sun, 1959
Lorraine Hansberry
Clybourne Park, 2010
Bruce Norris
The Exception and the Rule, 1930
Bertolt Brecht
Polaroid Stories, 1997
Naomi Iizuka
Fires in the Mirror, 1992
Anna Deveare Smith
Realism
Bringing the realities of life to the dramatic form; personal, social, ordinary
Naturalism
Everything is predetermined
Well-made Play
all actions contribute to the climax and the plot and everything is tied up at the end
Reversal of fortune followed by pity and fear. The McGuffin (Hitchcock term).
Major Forms of Theater
Melodrama, Comic Opera, Spectacle
Glaspell (1876-1948)
Pronounced Players (1915-1923)
Civic Repertory Theater (1930’s)
Federal Theater Project (WPA-1930’s)
O’Neill (1888-1953)
Theater Guild (1918-1950’s)
Arena Theater
Circular theater with vomitorium.
Black Box/Flexible Theater
No set plan; do whatever
Environmental Theater
Moving, room to room
Thrust Stage
Bellows out
End Stage
No proscenium
Proscenium Theater
Has an arch that serves as the 4th wall
Hansberry (1930-1965)
Assimilationist, Unity, Pride, Masculinity and Femininity (agency), futurity, children, fatherhood.
Labor: home change, cooking, etc…
Brecht (1898-1956)
Learning Play
Thinking about theater: form -> deliverance, context -> what it is
Iizuka (1965-)
like Ovid’s Metamorphosis
Political Theater
Theatre that comments on political issues, political action or protest that has a theatrical quality to it, and any action by politicians that is intended to make a point rather than accomplish something substantive.
Learning/Teaching Play
A radical and experimental form of modernist theatre developed by Bertolt Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the late 1930s. The Lehrstücke stem from Brecht’s Epic Theatre techniques but as a core principle explore the possibilities of learning through acting, playing roles, adopting postures and attitudes etc. and hence no longer divide between actors and audience.
Distanciation
The effect of distancing or estranging a spectator through means within the form or content of a text that challenge basic codes and conventions, and therefore mainstream ideological expectations.
Epic Theater
Primarily proposed by Bertolt Brecht who suggested that a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her, but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage.
Federal Theater Project
Government -> WPA
Employs hundreds of unemployed actors, directors, etc…
“Living Newspaper” Series
Documentary Theaters vs. Verbatim Theater
Wholly or in part uses pre-existing documentary material (such as newspapers, government reports, interviews, etc.) as source material for the script, ideally without altering its wording.
A form of documentary theatre in which plays are constructed from the precise words spoken by people interviewed about a particular event or topic.
Soliloquy
An act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.
Repertory
The performance of various plays, operas, or ballets by a company at regular short intervals.
Pronounced Players (1915-1923)
The Provincetown Players was an influential collective of artists, writers, intellectuals, and amateur theater enthusiasts. Under the leadership of the husband and wife team of George Cram “Jig” Cook and Susan Glaspell, the Players produced two seasons in Provincetown, Massachusetts and six seasons in New York City between 1915 and 1923. The company’s founding has been called “the most important innovative moment in American theatre,” in part for launching the career of Eugene O’Neill and building an audience for American playwrights.
Theater Guild (1918-1950’s)
The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner’s wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players. Its original purpose was to produce non-commercial works by American and foreign playwrights. It differed from other theaters at the time in that its board of directors shared the responsibility of choosing plays, management, and production. The Theatre Guild contributed greatly to the success of Broadway from the 1920s throughout the 1970s.
Verisimilitude
The appearance or semblance of truth; likelihood; probability. The “lifelikeness” or believability of a work of fiction.
Irma Vep
Charles Ludlam (1943-1987) -melodrama and theater of the absurd (more specifically, theater of the ridiculous)
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
Who’s afraid of Virgina Woolf?
Edward Albee
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
Edward Albee
Theater of the Absurd, melodrama
Melodrama
exaggerated feel of emotion, appeals to emotions above all else, considered to be a “trope”. Gothic literature, Penny dreadful, silent melodramas
The Ridiculous Theater Company
Ludlam founded in 1967
Camp
about effect, a sensibility, not really an idea. Stylized, aesthetic (glamour and over glamorous). Artifice, exaggeration, not deliberate – thrives off of failure, but an appreciation for it.
