Intro To Theatre Flashcards
What does the textbook say the four categories of theatre labor are?
Work, art, impersonation, and performance
What do presentational performances do?
They acknowledge the presence of the audience
What do representational performances do?
They do not acknowledge the presence of the audience.
What is realism in theatre?
It is when the actors on stage act as people normally do.
What does the textbook say are the two notions of acting?
External performance and internal performance.
What is external performance?
It is when an actor plays their character only through outward actions.
What is internal acting?
It is when an actor actually lives as their character.
What other job did Chekhov have in addition to writing plays?
He was also a doctor.
What was the first play performed entirely with method acting?
The Seagull by Chekhov.
What is declamatory acting?
It was an old way of acting where the actors would be melodramatic and have large gestures. There were even textbooks that taught which gestures to make for certain emotions.
Why don’t playwrights add more details to their stage directions?
Because it allows the director and actors to be more creative with their actions, and set and costume designers to be more creative with their designs.
What is parabasis?
It is direct speech to the audience
What is credibility in a play?
It is when the characters act and make decisions that their characters would do.
What does it mean for a play to have gravity?
It means that the play is very meaningful to the audience.
What does it mean for a play to have pertinence?
It means that the play contains subjects that are important to the audience during the time it was created.
What does compression in a play mean?
It means how well the playwright takes the time in the story and compresses it into the time of a play.
What does economy mean in a play?
It means how well the playwright takes things out of the story so that the story can fit into the time of the play.
What is the city for new plays?
Chicago
What are Aristotle’s poetics?
Plot, character, thought, diction, song, spectacle, leads to catharsis
What are Aristotle’s Classical Unities (Three Unities)?
Unity of action, unity of time, unity of place
What is the playwright’s process?
Write in isolation, rewrite in isolation, table read in informal setting, rewrite, table read in formal setting, rewrite, staged reading, rewrite, first (out of town tryout) production? Rewrite? Bigger fully realized production?
What are the two things that determine how much of a play’s design is actually created?
The director and the budget.
When did scenery start to become more popular in plays?
Only a couple hundred years ago when indoor theatres became more popular and had more controlled environments inside of them.
What is metaphoric scenery?
It is scenery that is not made to look like the actual setting of the play, but made to create a symbol or certain feelings in an audience.
