Theatre Exam 4
Terms
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- \"King Oedipus\"
- Written in 430 B.C.E. by Sophocles.
- \"Tartuffe\"
- Written in 1664 by Moliere.
- \"A Doll\'s House\"
- Written in 1879 by Henrik Ibsen.
- \"The Cherry Orchard\"
- Written in 1904 by Anton Chekov.
- \"Mother Courage and Her Children\"
- Written in 1939 by Bertolt Brecht.
- \"A Streetcar Named Desire\"
- Written in 1947 by Tennessee Williams.
- \"Death of a Salesman\"
- Written in 1949 by Arthur Miller.
- \"Waiting for Godot\"
- Written in 1954 by Samuel Beckett.
- \"A Raisin in the Sun\"
- Written in 1959 by Lorraine Hansbury.
- \"Fences\"
- Written in 1987 by August Wilson.
- Tracy Letts
- Awards: 2008 Tony Award Best Play; 2008 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Play; 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Most Recent Production Work: \"August: Osage County\" (2007-2009); \"Superior Donuts\" (2009- )
- Julie Taymor
- Awards: 1998 Tony Award Best Costume Design (winner); 1998 Tony Award Best Direction of a Musical (winner); 1998 Tony Award Best Original Musical Score (nominee); 1998 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Costume Design (winner); 1998 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Direction of a Musical (winner). Production Work: "The Green Bird" (Apr 2000-Jun 2000)
- Santo Loquasto
- Awards: 2005 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design of a Play (\"Glengarry Glen Ross\"); 1990 Tony Award Best Costume Design (\"Grand Hotel\"); 1990 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Costume Design (\"Grand Hotel\"); 1989 Tony Award Best Scenic Design (\"Cafe Crown\"); 1989 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"Italian American Reconciliation\"); 1989 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"Cafe Crown\"); 1977 Tony Award Best Costume Design (\"The Cherry Orchard\"); 1977 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"American Buffalo\"); 1977 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"The Cherry Orchard\"); 1972 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"The Championship Season\"); 1972 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"Sticks and Bones\"). Production Work: \"Waiting for Godot\" (Apr 2009-Jul 2009); \"Ragtime\" (Nov 2009-?); \"Race\" (Dec 2009-?)
- Arthur Laurents
- Awards: 1984 Tony Award Best Direction of a Musical (\"La Cage aux Folles\"); 1975 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Director of a Musical (\"Gypsy\"); 1968 Tony Award Best Musical (\"Hallelujah, Baby!\") Production Work: \"Gypsy\" (May 2008-Jan 2009); \"West Side Story\" (Mar 2009-?)
- Greg Vinkler
- Awards: -- Production Work: \"West Side Story\" - performer (Mar 2009-?)
- Hugh Jackman
- Awards: 2004 Tony Award Best Actor in a Musical (\"The Boy from Oz\"); 2004 Theatre World Award (\"The Boy from Oz\"); 2004 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actor in a Musical (\"The Boy from Oz\"). Production Work: \"The Boy from Oz\" (Oct 2003-Sep 2004); \"A Steady Rain\" (Sep 2009-Dec 2009)
- Eugene Lee
- Awards: 2004 Tony Award Best Scenic Design (\"Wicked\"); 2004 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design of a Musical (\"Wicked\"); 1995 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"Show Boat\"); 1979 Tony Award Best Scenic Design (\"Sweeney Todd\"); 1974 Tony Award Best Scenic Design (\"Candide\"); 1974 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Set Design (\"Candide\"); 1971 Drama Desk Award Most Promising Set Design (\"Alice in Wonderland\"). Production Work: \"You\'re Welcome America\" (Feb 2009-Mar 2009); \"The Homecoming\" (Dec 2007-Apr 2008); \"The Pirate Queen\" (Apr 2007-Jun 2007); \"Wicked\" (Oct 2003-?).
- Elton John
- Awards: 2009 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Music (\"Billy Elliot: The Musical\"); 2000 Tony Award Best Original Musical Score (\"Aida\"). Production Work: \"Billy Elliot: The Musical\" - music (Nov 2008-?); \"Lestat\" - music (Apr 2006-May 2006); \"Aida\" - music (Mar 2000-Sep 2004)
- Norbert Leo Butz
- Awards: 2005 Tony Award Best Actor in a Musical (\"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels\"); 2005 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actor in a Musical (\"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels\"). Production Work: \"Speed-the-Plow\" (Oct 2008-Feb 2009); \"Is He Dead\" (Dec 2007-Mar 2008); \"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels\" (Mar 2005-Sep 2006)
- Alice Ripley
- Awards: 2009 Tony Award Best Actress in a Musical (\"Next to Normal\"). Production Work: \"Next to Normal\" (Apr 2009-?); \"Children and Art\" (Mar 21, 2005-Mar 21, 2005); \"Dreamgirls\" (Sep 24, 2001-Sep 24, 2001).
- Ad Lib
- To improvise lines of a speech
- Aside
- In a play, thoughts spoken aloud by one character (often, to the audience) without being heard or noticed by others onstage.
- Allegory
- Symbolic representation of abstract themes through characters, action, and other concrete elements of a play.
- Audition
- A tryout by performers before a director for a role in a play or musical
- Antagonist
- Opponent of the protagonist in a drama.
- At rise
- Expression used to describe what is happening onstage at the moment when the curtain first rises or the lights come up.
- Avant-garde
- Of or pertaining to the experimental treatment (unorthodox or daring; radical) of artistic, musical, or literary material.
- Book
- Spoken (as opposed to sung) portion of the text of a musical play; to schedule engagements for artists or productions.
- Bunraku
- A form of Japanese puppet theater in which puppeteers, dressed in black and visible to the audience, manipulate large puppets to the accompaniment of a chanted narration and musical instruments.
- Burlesque
- A humorous and provocative stage show featuring slapstick humor, comic skits, bawdy songs, striptease acts, and a scantily clad female chorus.
- Capa y espada
- Literally, \"cape and sword\"; Spanish play about intrigue and duels of honor.
- Catharsis
- Greek word, usually translated as \"purgation,\" which Aristotle used in his definition of tragedy, referring to the vicarious cleansing of emotions in the audience through their representation onstage.
- Climax
- The high point in the development of a dramatic plot. The scene toward the end of a drama in which all the forces reach their highest pitch and the fate of all the characters is determined.
- Commedia dell\'arte
- Italian popular comedy, developed chiefly during the 16th–18th centuries, in which masked entertainers improvised from a plot outline based on themes associated with stock characters and situations.
- Complication
- Introduction, in a play, of a new force which creates a new balance of power and entails a delay in reaching the climax.
- Conflict
- Tension between two or more characters that leads to a crisis or climax; a fundamental struggle or imbalance -- involving ideologies, actions, personalities, etc. -- underlying the plot of a play.
- Curtain-raiser
- In nineteenth-century theatre, a short play presented before a full-length drama.
- Denouement
- Point near the end of the play when suspense is satisfied and \"the knot is untied.\"
- Deus ex machina
- Literally, \"god from a machine,\" a resolution device in classic Greek drama; hence, intervention of supernatural forces -- usually at the last moment -- to save the action from its logical conclusion. In modern drama, an arbitrary and coincidental solution.
- Double entendre
- Word or phrase in comedy that has a double meaning, the second often sexual.
- Dramaturg
- A.K.A. \"literary manager.\" Position that originated in Europe and is now found in many theatres in the United States, particularly not-for-profit theatres. The dramaturg analyzes scripts, advises directors, and works with playwrights on new pieces.
- Episodic Structure
- Episodic drama begins relatively early in the story and does not compress the action but expands it; the forces in episodic drama are centrifugal, moving out to embrace additional elements. Episodic plays do not necessarily follow a close cause-and-effect development.
- Exposition
- Imparting of information necessary for an understanding of the story but not covered by the action onstage; events or knowledge from the past, or occurring outside the play, which must be introduced so that the audience can understand the characters or plot.
- Flashback
- In a narrative or story, movement back to a time in the past to show a scene or event before the narrative resumes at the point at which it was interrupted.
- Hanamichi
- In kabuki theatre, a bridge running from behind the audience (toward the left side of the audience) to the stage. Performers can enter on the hanamichi; important scenes may also be played on it.
- Hubris
- Ancient Greek term usually defined as \"excessive pride\" and cited as a common tragic character flaw.
- Irony
- A condition in the reverse of what we have expected or an expression whose intended implication is the opposite of its literal sense.
- Lazzi
- Comic pieces of business repeatedly used by characters in Italian commedia dell\'arte.
- Minstrelsy
- Type of nineteenth-century production usually featuring white performers made up in blackface.
- Objective
- Stanislavsky\'s term for that which is urgently desired and sought by a character, the long-range goal which propels a character to action.
- Obstacle
- That which delays or prevents the achieving of a goal by a character. An obstacle creates complication and conflict.
- Pace
- Rate at which a performance is played; also, to perform a scene or play to set its proper speed.
- Prologue
- Introductory speech delivered to the audience by one of the actors or actresses before a play begins.
- Protagonist
- Principal character in a play, the one whom the drama is about.
- Performance Art
- A form of theatrical art featuring the activity of the artist and works presented in a variety of media.
- Proscenium
- Arch or frame surrounding the stage opening in a box or picture stage.
- Plot
- As distinct from a story, patterned arrangements of events and characters in a drama, with incidents selected and arranged for maximum dramatic impact; in Elizabethan theatres, an outline of the play posted backstage for the actors.
- Reversal
- Sudden switch of circumstances or revelation of knowledge, which leads to a result contrary to expectations; called peripeteia or peripety in Greek drama.
- Ritual
- Ceremonial event, often religious, which takes place in a specific sequence.
- Satire
- The use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.
- Sides
- Script containing only a single actor\'s lines and cues. Elizabethan actors learned their roles from sides.
- Slapstick
- Type of comedy or comic business which relies on ridiculous physical activity -- often vigorous -- for its humor.
- Soliloquy
- Speech in which a character who is alone onstage speaks inner thoughts aloud.
- Stage Convention
- An established theatrical technique or practice arbitrarily accepted through custom or usage.
- Stage Manager
- Person who coordinates all aspects of a production related to the director and actors, both during the rehearsals and during the run of the show; he or she ensures that the director\'s artistic choices are maintained during performances.
- Subtext
- Meaning and movement of a play below its surface; that which is not stated but implied.
- Spine
- In the Stanislavsky method, a character\'s dominant desire or motivation; usually thought of as an action and expressed as a verb; also, the \"through-line\" or general action that runs through a play from beginning to end.
- Strike
- To remove pieces of scenery or props from onstage or to take down an entire set after a final performance.
- Thespian
- Synonym for \"performer\"; from Thespis (sixth century B.C.E.), who is said to have been the first actor in ancient Greek theatre.
- Theme
- Central thought of a play; the idea or ideas with which a play deals and which it expounds.
- Tartuffe - Synopsis
- As the play begins, the well-off Orgon is convinced that Tartuffe is a man of great religious zeal and fervor. In fact, Tartuffe is a scheming hypocrite. He is interesting as a character in that he gets around Orgon not by telling lies but by allowing him to use his power as the master of the household over everyone else. By the time Tartuffe is exposed and Orgon renounces him, Tartuffe has legal control of his finances and family and is about to steal all of his wealth and marry his daughter — all at Orgon\'s own invitation. At the very last minute, the king intervenes, and Tartuffe is condemned to prison.
- Climactic Form
- I. Plot begins late in story, closer to the very end or climax II. Covers a short space of time, perhaps a few hours, or at most a few days III. Contains a few solid, extended scenes, such as three acts with each act comprising one long scene IV. Occurs in a restricted locale, one room or one house V.Number of characters is severely limited, usually not more than six or eight VI. Plot in linear and moves in a single line with few subplots or counter plots VII. Line of action proceeds in a cause and effect chain. The characters and events are closely linked in a sequence of logical, almost inevitable development
- Noh (No)
- A major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. The repertoire is normally limited to a specific set of historical plays. A Noh performance often lasts all day and consists of five Noh plays interspersed with shorter, humorous kyōgen pieces