Theater
Terms
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- The minstrel show
- Nineteenth century, white men distorted features to appear as exaggerated "black" people, some African Americans resorted to this to find work.
- Lorraine Hansberry
- A Raisin in the Sun writer (domestic tragedy and theater of diversity)
- David Henry Hwang
- M. Butterfly
- Luis Valdez
- Chicano theater, zoot suit 1978
- el teatro campesino
- actos, agitprop: makeshift environments and exaggerated characters
- Eve Ensler
- Feminist Theater, Vagina Monologues
- Tony Kushner
- Gay and Lesbian theater, Angels in america
- non-traditional casting
- reinforces canonized works, marginalized playwrighters from underrepresented groups
- genre
- plays that share a particular point of view, after French word meaning "category"
- Comedy of manner
- verbal wit usually aimed at the upper class
- Hamartia
- ancient greek term usually translated as "tragic flaw" literally means "missing the mark" could be a character flaw or an error in judgement
- melodrama
- exaggerated characters and events (the totally virtuous character) plots are to get pity and suspense
- comedy
- enlightenment, Century of progress, optimism
- satire
- correct vices, expose ridiculous behavior
- farce
- strong physical humor
- pun
- a play on words
- malapropisms
- ludicrous misuse of a word, especially by confusion with one of a similar sound
- parody
- similar to satire, but relying on a specific known target
- domestic comedy
- ordinary people, familiar situations
- theater of the absurd
- filled with non-sensical dialogue and plot, convey the inability of people to communicate and the irrationality of existance
- dark comedy
- sometimes a comedy that ends catastrophically, incongruity that outweighs our sympathy
- conflict
- tension between characters that leads to a crisis or climax
- climactic structure
- always moves forward in time, what happens in one scene leads to the next
- episodic structure
- generally over a long period of time with big jumps in place and time, each scene is an individual episode
- tragedy
-
Golden age of greece, renaissance,
Fear+Pity+Suffering - fear
- personal connection feeling that events could happen to you
- Traditional/Classical Tragedy
- the chief characters are people of stature: Kings, Queens, Nobility- central character is caught in a series of inescapable circumstances (destiny)
- heroic tragedy
- high born characters, sometimes have happy endings, death of main character is triumph not tragedy
- domestic or bourgeois tragedy
- ordinary people, stresses problems of middle and lower classes
- Aristotle
- discussed tragedy in the poetics and coined "tragic flaw"
- Quintessential characters
- representative of something
- commedia dell'arte
- no script, just scenario. Actors were servants or ruling class
- allegory
- symbolic representation of abstract themes through characters, action, and other concrete elemnts of a play
- plot
- arrangements of events and characters for dramatic impact, in elizabethan theater an outline of the play posted backstage
- exposition
- providing audience with knowledge not occuring onstage that is important to understand characters or plot
- obstacles
- pre-exist
- complications
- arise during the play
- medium
- means by which an art form presents itself.theater medium is always presentation of a story or event
- rehersal
- preparation by a cast for the performance
- selectivity
- art forms using certain elements while eliminating others, forcing full attention on one element and not others
- deus ex machine
- "god from a machine" any device brought in to solve problems (gods, fate, etc)
- anachronism
- placing a character or event outside its proper time sequence
- socio drama
- characters identify and attempt to remedy inter-group conflicts
- gravity
- graveness
- pertinence
- topicality, relates to us in this time
- celebration
- gives us something to admire, admirable victims
- caricature
- mostly comic, exaggerated