Term
|
Definition
| Originating in 16th century Italy, traveling acting companies that presented broad, improvisational comedy and were popular throughout Europe between 1550 and 1750. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A figure in commedia dell'arte; the crafty servant of Pantalone. His costume is covered with multicolored lozenges that represent the patches he used to repair his threadbare clothing. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A stock character of comedia dell'arte; a stingy retired Venetian merchant who often makes a fool of himself by courting young women. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A servant and acrobat who is smarter than his master. |
|
|
Term
| Innamorata and Innamorato |
|
Definition
| A leading lady and a leading man who are lovers. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A gossipy old woman who meddles in the affairs of the lovers. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Rules for writing a play requiring (1) the action to take place witin a 24 hour period. (2) settings that can all be reached within 24 hours. (3) no commingling of comedy and tragedy. These rules for unity of time, place, and action were a misinterpretation of Aristotle's writings. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Features grand gestures and an exaggerated style. The actors deliver their lines directly to the audience in a rhetorical manner typified by order, harmony, and decorum. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A technique of set design and scene painting that gives the illusion of depth; it gave birth to the proscenium arch. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The area farthest from the audience. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The area closest to the audience. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Religious dramas in Spain during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Crude platform stages built in courtyards of inns in Spain for performances of auto sacramentales and other plays. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| In England, one of the groups of student actors writing and performing plays in the style of the ancient Greeks and Romans; included Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Professional theater companies of boys who competed with adult acting troops in London. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A strict religious group in Elizabethan England who hated the theatre and lobbied to shut it down. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Ticket office of a theatre; named for the entry room in Elizabetan theatres where theatre goers dropped payment into a box. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Audience members who stood on the main floor (and paid the least for tickets) in an Elizabethan theatre. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A technique used by English and Spanish playwrights to set the mood or place of a scene. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Originating in the early 1500s, a form of entertainment for monarchs and their invited audiences; characterized by grand dances, costumes with masks, poetry, and speeches all hung on a thin story line paising the monarch and demonstrating the need for loyalty. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Rebirth. 14th through 17th century. An extrordinary period in European history when wisdom of the ancient greeks and romans was rediscovered and the church was challenged. Flowering or arts and literature and the beginning of modern science. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Period of English history that began in 1660 with the reestablishment of the monarchy. Characterized by scientific discovery, new philosophical concepts, improved economic conditions and a return of the theatre. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A form of Restoration comedy that features wit and wordplay and often includes themes of sexual gratification, bedroom escapades, and humankind's primitive nature when it comes to sex. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A period in Europe that glorified the human power to reason and analyze; a time of great philisophical, scientific, technological, political, and religious views. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A type of play characterized by stories about common people, rather then ones of noble birth, who feel grand emotions and suffer devastating consequences. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A type of comedy that features middle-class characters finding happiness and true love. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Enlightenment poets, novelists, and playwrights who questioned the Scientific Revolution's obsession with logic; they felt that science was not adequate to describe the full range of human experience, and stressed instinct, intuition, and feeling in their writings. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| 'Storm and Stress.' The Romantic movement in Germany. Plays exalted nature, emotions, and individualism. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Most popular in the late nineteenth century. A type of play that features working class heroes who set out on a great adventure; story lines that praise marraige, God, and country; florid background music. Words a blend of music and drama. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A sarcastic label for a formula play whose ending is happy and whose loose ends are neatly tied up. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A play that expresses a social problem so that it can be remedied. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Commonly used in realistic plays, a true-to-life interior containing a room or rooms with the fourth wall removed so the audience feels they are looking in on the characters' private lives. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| An imaginary wall seperating the actors from audience; an innovation of Realism in the theatre in the late 1800s. |
|
|
Term
| Naturalism (Slice of life theatre) |
|
Definition
| A style of theatrical design and acting whose goal is to imitate real life, including its seamy side. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Any work of art that is experimental, innovative, or unconventional. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A design style or theatre genre in which a certain piece of scenery, a costume, or light represent the essence of the entire enviornment. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A style that shows the audience the action of the play through the mind of one character. Instead of seeing photographic reality, the audience sees the character's own emotions and point of view. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A movement that was ignited by the atrocities of WWI and gained fame through staged performances designed to demonstrate the meaningless of life. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A genre of theatre that emphasizes the subconscious realities of the character; usually through design, and often includes random sets with dreamlike qualities. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Originated by Antonin Artaud, stylized, ritualized, performances intended to attack spectators' sensibilities and purge them of destructive tendencies. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| An avant-garde "ism" that was the result of the two world wars. It had three types: fatalist, existentialist, and hilarious. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Marked by surreal distortion and senseless danger; a term that comes from the way that Czech writer Franz Kafka depicted the world. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A post WWII philosophy that sees humans as being alone in the universe, without God, so they are entirely responsible for their destinies. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Features plays that have a grand scope, large casts, and cover a long period and a wide range of sometimes unrelated incidents. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The result of techniques to keep the audience aware that what they are watching is only a play. Techniques include having the actors address the audience out of character, exposing the lights, removing the proscenium arch and curtains, and having the actors perform on bare platforms or simple sets that are sometimes punctuated with political slogans. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A style of realism that is expressed through lyrical language. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Originally, small experimental theatres that sprang up in the late 1950s outside Times Square to put on plays about current issues. They typically have much smaller houses than Broadway theatres. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Inexpensive, noncommercial, artistically significant plays in small, out-of-the-way theatres. In the US mid 1950s to mid 1960s. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Small, nontraditional, noncommercial theatres located in storefronts, coffeehouses, churches, and other public spaces in the NYC area. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Unstructured theatrical events on street corners, at bus stops, in lobbies, and virtually anywhere else people gather. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| An experimental theatre troop begun in 1961 that uses giant puppets as well as actors in political parables. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A famous 20th century experimental theatre using aesthetically radical techniques to shake up audiences about social and political issues. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Permanent, professional theatres located outside NYC. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| An art form from the mid 20th century in which one or more performers use some combination of visual arts (including video), theatre, dance, music, and poetry, often to dramatize political ideas. The purpose is less to tell a story than to convey a state of being. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| In contrast to a musical, the category of plays without music. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A type of drama introduced at the end of the 16th century that is entirely sung. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Like an opera, a drama set to music, but with a frivolous, comic theme, some spoken dialouge, a melodramatic story, and usually a little dancing. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A type of musical characterized by a lightheatred, fast-moving comic story, whos dialouge is interspersed with popular music. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A type of theatre that features song and dance interspersed with spoken text. Includes not only modern musicals with popular songs and impressive spectacle but also the masques, operas, burlesques, minstrel shoes, variety shows, and music hall reviews of earlier periods. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A musical that uses rock and roll music, psychedelic rock, or contemporary pop and rock. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A program of satirical sketches, singing, and dancing about a particular theme. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A program of unrelated singing, dancing, and comedy numbers. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A popular form of stage entertainment from the 1880s to the 1930s, descended from burlesque. Programs included slapstick comedy routines, song and dance numbers, magic acts, juggling, and acrobatic performances. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A form of musical entertainment that features bawdy songs, dancing women, and sometimes striptease. Begun as a parody of opera and the upper class. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Orchestrated melodies that are written by a composer. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Spoken lines of dialouge as well as the plot. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
|
|
Term
|
Definition
|
|
Term
|
Definition
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A musical with a particularly well-developed story and characters. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A musical that features the work of a director-choreographer. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A musical that is mostly singing with less spoken dialouge and usually a darker, dramatic tone. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| At the beginning of a musical; a medley of the songs played by the orchestra as a preview. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A song in a musical that provides comic relief. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| In a musical, a big production number which receives so much applause that it stops the show. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| In a musical, the repetition of a song, sometimes with new lyrics, in a later scene. The new meaning or subtext makes a dramatic point. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| A style of opera, including operette, that developed out of comic interludes performed during the intermissions of operas. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Comic opera that mixed popular songs of the day with spoken dialouge. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Stage entertainment consisting of songs, dances, and comic scenes performed by white actors in blackface makeup. |
|
|
