Performance Styles Flashcards
Epic Theatre practitioner
Practitioner: Bertolt Brecht
Epic Theatre
A style of presentation which tells a story, usually historical, on a large scale, and including a number of people in a series of events over a long time. It aims at the intellect rather than at engaging the emotions and often uses devices such as ‘alienation’. It’s episodic style may contain conventions such as narrative, songs, signs, use of mask, and movement.
Epic Theatre conventions
- Political ideas (left wing) with focus on social issues
- Didactic approach
- Narrative story telling
- Alienation effects
- Disjointed time sequences
- Character transformation
- ‘Gestus’ (stylised movement)
- Signs and placards
- Multimedia and projections
Theatre of the Absurd
Dramatisations centred on the futility of life. Language is often cliched or trite. Activity is repetitious and/or meaningless. Character(s) may be inappropriate to the given situation. The tone can be serious and at the same time comic and/or ironic.
Theatre of the Absurd practitioner
Practitioner: Samuel Beckett
Theatre of the Absurd conventions
- Based in philosophy of ‘nihilism’ that life is meaningless and absurd
- Repetition, contradiction, fragmented dialogue
- Static of plot, characters, and setting (little or no change)
- Wordplay, dry humour, black humour
- Impersonal characterisation
- Circular plot/action
Commedia dell’arte
A form of theatre characterised by masked ‘types’ or stock characters, high energy performance, and often includes basic plots, pantomimic acting, buffoonery, juggling and acrobatic feats.
Commedia dell’arte practitioner
Dario Fo
Commedia dell’arte conventions
- Commedia dell’arte influence
- Satire
- Farce
- Comedy
- Slapstick, clowning
- Social issues
- Minimalism
Poor Theatre
Actors voice and body skill were the primary spectacle on stage, there were no elaborate sets, lights, or sounds. The relationship between the audience and the actor was the emphasis of the performance.
Poor Theatre practitioner
Jerzy Growtowski
Poor Theatre conventions
- Stagecraft minimalism (limited props etc.)
- Breaking the fourth wall, non-traditional theatre spaces
- Neutral lighting
- Object/space/character transformation
- Emotional exaggeration and catharsis
- Focus on provocation
- The performance as ‘holy’ and a focus on ritual
- Dramatic symbol
- Stylised movement
Theatre of Cruelty
Should affect the audience as much as possible, shocking the senses through a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound and performance.
Theatre of Cruelty practitioner
Antonin Artaud
Theatre of Cruelty conventions
- ‘Lyrical and symbolic’ (visual poetry)
- Violent movement, gesture combined with loud vocal sounds or chanting
- Raw emotion
- Stylised movement
- An emphasis on shocking the audience and the grotesque
- Confrontational theatre, theatre as ‘therapeutic catharsis’
