Theatre

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AGON: [Greek Old Comedy] A scene with a debate between the two opposing forces in a play.
AMPHITHEATER: Large oval, circular, or semi-circular outdoor theatre with rising tiers of seats around an open playing are; also, an exceptionally large indoor auditorium.
CHOREGUS: Wealthy person who financed a playwright's works at an ancient Greek dramatic festival.
CHORUS: [Ancient Greek Drama] A group of performers who sing and dance, sometimes participating in the action but usually simply commenting on it. In modern times, performers in a musical play who sing and dance as a group.
CITY DIONYSIA: The most important Greek festival in honor of the god Dionysus, and the first to include drama.
DOMINUS: Leader of a Roman acting troupe.
NEW COMEDY: Hellenistic Greek and Roman comedies that deal with romantic and domestic situations.
OLD COMEDY: Classical Greek comedy that pokes fun at social, political, or cultural conditions and at particular figures.
ORCHESTRA: A circular playing space in ancient Greek theaters; in modern times, the ground-floor seating in a theater auditorium.
PANTOMIME: Originally a Roman entertainment in which a narrative was sung by a chorus while the story was acted out by dancers. Now used loosely to cover any form of presentation that relies on dance, gesture, and physical movement without dialogue or speech.
PARABASIS: Scene in classical Greek Old Comedy in which the chorus directly addresses the audience members and makes fun of them.
PARODOS: In classical Greek drama, the scene in which the chorus enters. Also, the entranceway for the chorus in Greek theatre.
SATYR PLAY: One of the three types of classical Greek drama, usually a ribald takeoff on Greek mythology and history that included a chorus of satyrs, mythological creatures who were half-man and half-goat. On festival days in Athens, it was presented as the final play following three tragedies.
SCAENA: Stage house in a Roman theater.
THEATRON: Where the audience sat in an ancient Greek theater.
THESPIAN: Synonym for "performer"; from Thespis, who is said to have been the first actor in ancient Greek theater.
TRILOGY: In classical Greece, three tragedies written by the same playwright and presented on a single day; they were connected by a story or thematic concerns.
BUNRAKU: Japanese puppet theater.
HANAMICHI: In kabuki theater, 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.
HASHIGAKARI: Bridge in no theater on which the performers make their entrance from the dressing area to the platform stage.
KABUKI: Form of popular Japanese theater combining music, dance, and dramatic scenes.
KATHAKALI: Traditional dance-drama of India.
LITURGICAL DRAMA: Early medieval church drama, written in Latina and dealing with biblical stories.
MANSIONS: Individual scenic units used for the staging of religious dramas in the Middle Ages.
MORALITY PLAY: Medieval drama designed to teach a lesson. The characters were often allegorical and represented virtues or faults.
MYSTERY PLAYS: Also called cycle plays. Short dramas of the Middle Ages based on events of the Old and New Testaments and often organized into historical cycles.
NO: Rigidly traditional form of Japanese drama combinging music, dance, and lyrics.
PAGEANT MASTER: During the Middle Ages, one who supervised the mounting of mystery plays.
PEKING (BEIJING): Popular theater (Opera) of China that developed in the ninteenth century.
PLATFORM STAGE: Elevated stage with no proscenium.
SHADOW PLAY: A play performed widely in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia involving intricately carved flat leather puppets that create patters of light and shadow when their image is projected on a screen.
WERNACULAR DRAMA: Drama from the Middle Ages performed in the everyday speech of the people and presented in town squares or other parts of cities.
WAGON STAGE: Low platform mounted on wheels or casters by means of which scenery is moved on- and offstage.
APPRENTICE: Young performer training in an Elizabethan acting company.
BOX: Small private compartment for a group of spectators built into the walls of traditional proscenium-arch and other theaters.
CAZUELA: Gallery above the tavern in the back wall of the theaters of the Spanish golden age; the area where unescorted women sat.
COMEDIA: Full-length (three act) nonreligious play of the Spanish golden age.
COMPAÃ‘ÃAS DE PARTE: Acting troupes in the Spanish golden age, organized according to a sharing system.
CORRAL: Theater of the Spanish golden age, usually located in the courtyard of a series of adjoining buildings.
GALLER: In theater buildings, the undivided seating area cut into the walls of the building.
GROOVE SYSTEM: System in which tracks on te stage floor and above the stage allowed for the smooth movement of flat wings onto and off the stae; usually there were a series of grooves at each stage position.
HIRELING: Member of an Elizabethan acting troupe who was paid a set salary and was not a shareholder.
LAZZI: Comic pieces of business used repeatedly by chracters in Italian commedia dell'arte.
MASQUE: Lavish, spectacular court entertainment primarily during the late English Renaissance.
NEOCLASSICAL IDEALS: Rules developed by critics during the Italian Renaissance, supposedly based on the writings of Aristotle.
PATIO: In the theater of the Spanish golden age, the pit area for the audience.
PERSPECTIVE: Illusion of depth in painting, introduced into scene design during the Italian Renaissance.
PIT: Floor of the house in Renaissance theaters. It was originally a standing area; by the end of the eighteenth century, backless benches were added in most countries.
PLOT: The sequence and patterned arrangement of events in a drama, with incidents selected and arranged for maximum dramatic impact.
POLE AND CHARIOT: Giacomo Torelli's mechanized means of changing sets made up of flat wings.
PRIVATE THEATERS: Indoor theaters in Elizabethan England.
PUBLIC THEATERS: Outdoor theaters in Elizabethan England.
SHAREHOLDERS: In Elizabethan acting troupes, members who received part of the profits as payment.
SIDES: Script containing only a single performer's lines and cues. Elizabethan actors learned their roles from sides.
SLAPSTICK: A type of comedy of comic business that relies on exaggerated or ludicrous physical activity for its humor.
SOLILOQUY: Speech in which a character who is alone onstage speaks inner thoughts.
TIRING HOUSE: Elizabethan stage house.
UNITIES: Term referring to the preference that a play's lot occur within one day (unity of time), in one place (unity of place), and with no action irrelevant to the plot (unity of action).
YARD PIT: (Standing Area) In Elizabethan public theaters.
ZANNI: Comic male servants in Italian commedia dell'arte.
BALLAD OPERA: Eighteenth-century English form that burlesqued opera.
BOX SET: Interior setting using flats to form the back and side walls and often the ceiling of a room.
COMEDY OF MANNERS: Form of comic drama that became popular in seventeenth-century France and the English Resoration, emphasizing a cultivated or sophisticated atmosphere and witty dialogue.
DRAME: Eighteenth-century French term usually denoting a serious drama that dealt with middle-class characters.
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 will understand the characters or plot.
GESAMTKUNSTWERK: Richard Wagner's theaory of a unified work of theatrical art.
MELODRAMA: Dramatic form, made popular in the nineteenth century, which emphasized action and spectacular effects and also used music; it had stock characters and clearly defined villains and heroes.
MINSTREL SHOW: Type of nineteenth-century production featuring white performers made up in blackface.
RÃ‰GISSEUR: Continental European term for a theater director; it often denotes a dictatorial director.
REPERTORY, REPERTOIRE: Acting company that at any given time can perform a number of plays alternately; also, the plays regularly performed by the company.
ROMANTICISM: Movement of the nineteenth century that sought to free the artist from rules and considered unfettered inspiration the source of all creativity.
STORM AND STRESS: Antineoclassical eighteenth-century German movement that was a forerunner of romanticism; in German, Sturm und Drang.
WELL-MADE PLAY: Dramatic form popular in the ninteenth century and early twentieth century that combined apparent plausibility of incident and surface realism with a tightly constructed plot.
ALIENATION: Bertolt Brecht's theory that, in his epic theater, audiences' emotional involvement should be minimized to increase their intellectual involvement with the political message.
BIOMECHANICS: Meyerhold's theory that a performer's body should be machinelike and that emotion could be represented externally.
CONSTRUCTIVISM: Post-World War I scene-design movement in which sets--frequently composed of ramps, platforms, and levels--were nonrealistic and were intended to provide greater opportunities for physical action.
DADA: Movement in art between the world wars, based on presenting the irrational and attacking traditional artistic values.
EPIC THEATER: Form of episodic drama associated with Bertolt Brecht and aimed at the intellect rather than the emotions.
EXPRESSIONISM: Movement in Germany at about the time of World War I, characterized by an attempt to dramatize subjective states through distortion; striking, often grotesque images; and lyric, unrealistic dialogue.
FUTURISM: Art movement, begun in Italy about 1909, which idealized mechanization and machinery.
NATURALISM: Special form of realism developed in Europe in the late nineteenth century; it was not carefully plotted or constructed but was meant to present a "slice of life."
STANISLAVSKI SYSTEM: Konstantin Stanislavski's techniques and theories about acting, which promote a naturalistic style stressing (among other things) "inner truth" as opposed to conventional theatricality.
SURREALISM: Departure from realism that attempted to present dramatically the working of the subconscious.
SYMBOLISM: Movement of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century that sought to express inner truth rather than represent life realistically.
THEATER OF CRUELTY: Antonin Artaud's visionary concept of a theater based on magic and ritual, which would liberate deep, violent, and erotic impulses.
THEATRICALISM: Exposing the elements of theater to make the audience members aware that they are watching theater.
UNIT SET: Single setting that can represent a variety of locales with the simple addition of properties or scenic elements.
BOOK: Spoken (as opposed to sung) portion of the text of a musical play.
BURLESQUE: Satire of a serious form of literature.
ENVIRONMENTAL THEATER: Brance of avantgarde theater stressing the environment in which a performance takes place.
EXISTENTIALISM: Term applied to plays illustrating a philosophy whose modern advocate was Jean-Paul Sartre and which holds that there are no longer any fixed standards or values.
HAPPENING: Nonliterary or unscripted theatrical event using a scenario that allows for chance occurrances.
MULTIMEDIA: Use of electronic media, such as slides, film, and videotape, in live theatrical presentations.
MUSICAL THEATER BROAD: Broad category that includes opera, operetta, musical comedy, and other musical plays (sometimes called lyric theater).
POOR THEATER: Term coined by Jerzy Grotowski to describe his theater, which was stripped to the bare essentials.
PERFORMANCE ART: Experimental theater that initially incorporated elements of dance and the visual arts. Since performance art often is based on the vision of an individual performer or director rather than a playwright, the autobiographical monologue has become a popular performance art form.
POSTMODERNISM: A contemporary concept suggesting that artists and audiences have gone beyond the modernist movements of realism and the various departures from realism.
AVANT-GARDE THEATER: Experimental theater that breaks away from the traditional mainstream.
OFF-LOOP THEATER: In Chicago, theater that is presented outside the city's downtown commercial section.
TRADITIONAL THEATER: Theater that presents works in an understandable, logical, recognizable style.

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