1. actor

2. audience

3. action

4. space

Chorus Movement:

Strophe

He was the Greek God of Agriculture and wine, killed and cut up body parts scattered.

5- 7 day festival

1. unity of time

2.unity of place

3.unity of action

prologue: establish conflict

episode/agon:development of relationships

exdos:end of action

Terence

Seneca

Plautus

subtle expression

characterization

elegant prose, language

emphasized romance, 

resembled musical comedies

added music 

elimination of Greek Chorus

emphasis on eavesdropping

**Plebian Games in November, 5-11 day festival

built on flat ground

elevated stage

space in front of scanea was proscana

2 to 3 doors

orchestra GONE

skene now 3 to 4 levels high

black=youth

white=old

red=slaves

Constantine

Rise of Christanity

Roman civilization disenigrating 

Stock Character

Maccus

used religious characters and religious themes to teach a moral lesson.

Used allegory

Dramatized the miracles performed by the Saints.

Moved outside of the church.

Feast of Corpus Christs

Earliest: Quem Quaertis: Whom seek ye?

Embellishments sung as a part of Mass. 

sections of church devoted to certain short play, paegant wagon.

One for each of the palys in a cycle

Gradual decline of religious theatre, one reason was weakening of the church, culminating the Protestant Reformation. 

-Also, secular qualities of drama finally overcame the religious material 

recognition. 

Tragic hero's realization of truth involving their fate to Aristotle was the most intense dramatic element.

individuals attacked personally

coarse raunchy humor

phallus

farce

MEnander

more refine

Menander

**on old comedy slide i said menader but meant aristophanes

focus on middle class stuff

14 and 15 centuries Italian drama began to replace religious drama with more secular stuff

-based work on Roman plays, which based their stuff on Greek plays

More secular

depended on portable stages

comedy of professional player

-slap stick humor

-youthful lovers didn't wear masks

-highly value because of the high level of performance

-improv

-stock characters

-simple 

Pantalone-miserly old man

Arlecchino-cunning clown

Punch and Judy- the lovers

Columbina-zanni, servant

behavior was predictable

played one character entire lives

used masks to protray characters

Space included stage, staggered wings, and a painted backdrop that gave a sense of perspective, vanishing point.

-1st theater to use changeable scenery

-most important long lasting development of Italian theater design

-frame that surrounds the stage

-seperated action from audience

-1st theater with staggered wings and changeable scenery

-reign of Queen Liz 1533-1603

-meant to entertain

The Swan

The Rose

The Globe- open air fit 2,000, 3,000 people

-The Fortune

Elizabethan Actor,

highly respected

His dad, James Burbage built the first theater, The Theater

born in 1564

Chamberlains men, his company

kings men during king james reign

1. tragedies

2.comedies

3.history palys

-prose

-verse

-iambic pentamenter: 10 beats per line.

written for the court, lots of singing and dancing, performed in banquet halls

-complex machinery that lifted or lowered characters from the sky

Auto Sacramentales

Auto-one act paly

scaramentales-scaraments

performed during corpus christi festival

combined elemnts of medieval, morality, and mystrey plays

wrote 1200 plays

most short in length

Life is a Dream

philosophical and poetic dialogue

very religious

Puritans thought theater was for low life and aristocracy, and immoral! 

they ran the country til 1660

all theaters closed for about 20 years

actors persecuted

theaters were cloesd and outdated. new theaters were built

theater royal

drury lane

lincolns field inn

dorset garden theater

producer, The Siege of Rhodes

used proscenium arch,

wing and shutter setting (five scene changes)

and an actress named Mrs Coleman

an attempt to revive and emulate classical attitudes towards art based on :

1.order

2.harmony

3.decorum

4.restrained wit

5.symmetry

VALUED THOUGHT OVER FEELING

focused on honor, integrity, self sacrifice, and heroic political subjects.

-strict unity of time, place, action

-no mixing of comedy and tragedy

-no chorus

-no soliloquy

-no deus ex machina

Le Cid

Women performed in French theater

began in 1660 with Charles II returning

stages reflected French theater

construction of new theaters in the 1670s

enclosed, and depended on artificial lighting,

year round theaters

seat prices depended on location.

-enabled realistic scene design (painted backdrops)

-apron produced intimacy

-more natural presentation

-long and narrow

-indoors with artificial lighting, open year long

(candles and chandeliers) 

-receding space

-actors could enter/exit the stage from the wings or between the drops

John Dryden 

17th century

Reworking of Shakespeaere's with happy endings

reveal the foibles of the society that watched them

influenced by moliere

-fashion and foibles of the upper class

-gossip adultery, sex

-witty repartee

-stock characters

comedy in which the emotions of the audience were played on, manipulated and exploited to arouse sympathy for the characters in the play. 

David Garrick -sentimental comedian

actor and manager of Drury Lane Theatre.

ushered in a more natural style of acting

sentimental comedian

-continued Shakespeare traditional staging, became famous for Hamlet performance. 

actors praised for fine figure, strong mellow voice, and facial expressions to convey emotion. "Natural Acting" but to us it's exaggerated. 

-during restotartion women acted on staged

most famous actress of age, mistress of Charles II,

discovered when 15

-the share system disappeared and repleaced with -contract system.

-actors hired for specific part

-Benefits were held, yearly performances dedicated to one actor who woudl keep all the profit. 

-company manager would run rehearsals

Christanity outlawed.

-peaceful time--> leisure time.

-dance performed by a women

-women banned from stage in 1629-->impersonators took over.

-elaborate make up and costumes

-established rhytms of speech and stimulated the emotions of audience

-music, three stringed instrument

-puppet plays

-about middle class and suffering, suicide play eventually banned.

-puppets were lifesized, three handlers dealt with them.

-used shamisen instrument too. 

-Character speaks to audience

-unheard by other characters on stage.

-represent an unspoken thought. 

-allowed lights to be dimmer or raised as needed

-added to selective lighting

-allowed actors to go all over in the stage to deliver  lines

-"fourth wall" of a room.

-acted as a window into dramatic action.

-machinery lifted actors

-fly galleries permitted scene changes

-apron shrank

-proscenium introduced as fourth wall

-with new lighting--> needed better scenery 

-finally a DIRECTOR!!!

-reproduction of accurate costumes!

1. Romanticism

2. Melodrama

3. The well made play

John Keats

Percy Bysshe sheel

Lord Byron

-philosophy of the individual: democracy and a cry for personal liberation.

-wasn't that popular though

Melodrama:

melo=song. 

-convent garden, drury lane, and haymarket "MAJOR" theaters had license to produce spoken drama. 

-"MINOR" theatres produced musical plays and finally produced spoken dialogue plays and accompanying music.

-virtuous maiden

-unscrupulous landlord.

-sentimental with well defined heros/villains

-lots of twists and plot turns

-strong emotional appeal

-decisive endings

-Eugene Scribe

1.Exposition-explanation of what is going on and one or two surprises

2.Surprise-a letter opened at a critical moment.

3.Suspense-steadily built throughout the play

4.Climax-late in the play,secrets are revealed, hero confronts antagonist and wins!

5.Denouement-resolution of the drama, all loose ends tied up. 

produced 400-500 plays

Well Made Play

-limelight added to gas-->intense lighting

-electric light-->lighting design "New Era"

-costumes aimed at historical accuracy 

-inner realism

-being in character even off stage

-explore character in situation other than those within the play

20th Drama

Realistic Plays

-often poetic in language and effect

-movement started in Germany

-influenced by Strndberg's work

-Alt to realistic drama

-Characters sometimes symbolic

beyond realism. 

through mind of the dreamer

the unconscious mind

-implies actions of the kind found in Homers Illiad

-sense of dramatic illusion is voided by reminders from the stage that one is watching a play

-harsh lighting

-blank stages

-long pauses

-wants audience to analyze not sit back and relax

-Samuel beckett

-some plays had no actors on stage (amplified breathing, little no plot)

-assumes world is meaningless

-grew out of existentialism, post war, French philosophy. 

Theatre of cruelty

-helped shape modern theater

-cruelty was pychological in that he wanted the audience to relinquish its comfortable and privileged position in the theatre and to feel the discomfort produced by facing unpleasant ideas or events. 

-though theater should be open space, warehose.

-

-improved lighting, 

-revolving stages

-complex flies

-theater in the round

-not symbolic, naturalistic, expressionistic

-creates emotional tension and emotitonal responses in the audience

-the rights that whites have

-death = fastball to Troy

-removed comforting distance between audience and actor

-invovled direct physcial fashion

-total theater emphaized gestures music light sound

-Dionysus '69

-Late 60's late ritualistic theater

-improvished physical contact performance pieces

Poor Theater

-Grotowski this theater poor in contrast to rich

-preexsisting texts but interperted them in a broader context

-total reconnotation of their meaning

-Robert Wilson multimedia drama takes hours to perform

-evocative and enigmatic images

Based on actual text from participants you're dramatizing

-parchman hour

-descends into chaos compassion and forgiveness

-how love changes

Experimentation

flourished in the first half of eh twentieth century continued into contemporary drama. Mixing media film, video, opera, rock and other music with live actors. 

-style developed in 50s and 60s connected with abrudists experiments in drama

-produce emotional situation

to inspire audience so much they take part on stage, indistinguishable form actors

Richard Schechners 

Tech innovations of contemporary drama

microphones

elaborate flies

stage affects like fog

stage flooding

music and dance

video 

projections

scrims

complex lighting

shifting scene changes

The modern method: involved relaxation techniques, memory exercises, and a great deal of self-analysis. Recreate in oneself the life of the character on stage.

            -Marlon Brando: Method actor, mumbling of lines, moodily half articulating them

James Dean: films tar emulated him

Al Pacino: Method actor

first African in minstrel shows,

"nobody"

hired by ziegfield

Oscar Hammersiten and Rogers

Story now became an essential element in Broadway musicals. 

Dance was used to as action in movement-

Jerome Robbins ushered in the triple threat

Actors who could sing, dance and act.

how society affects people

-alienation leades to isolation and loneliness

alcoholism

we sene he uses it to numb the pain of isolation and loneliness

emotional relationship of all kinds

speaks of women

bianaca-woman he lived with

-girl in green coat-lost true lvoe

-miss mcglome-nieghbor

-his mother-her death is haunting

light and darkness

only lgiht above his desk

All the incidents of threes in Krapps Last...

what are they?

three trips to start

three bananas

three drinks

three birthdays

three breaks in the farewell to love tape

The well made play!

-felt that realisitc drama convinced the audience that thigns had to be that way

-felt that realistic drama helped perpetuate this philosophy.

if i was in that situation what would the character im playing do?

By being in the “situation” the actor can give a performance that was a truthful living experience, not merely the imitation of the experience.

-founded in 1947

-lee strasberg was one of the best known teachers. adapted stanislavskis system of acting into an american model