Intro to Theatre
Terms
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- medium
- means by which art form presents its material
- selectivity
-
the key principle of theatre
the focus of the art form in life - deus ex machina
-
"god from a machine"
any device brought in randomly to solve problems in an end - aesthetic distance
- the distance in which we perceive and appreciate a work of art
- observed theatre
- theatrical technique in which everyone concerned does participate
- sociodrama
- the members of participating groups explore their own attitudes and prejudices
- satire
-
expose rediculous behavior
talks about trends, general problem - parody
- similiar to satire, but relying on a specific known target
- dark comedy
-
ends catastrophically
violation of the rule of "painless" stangeness - domestic comedy
- ordinary people, familiar situations
- comedy of manners
- verbal, aimed at the faults and pecularities of the upper classes
- tragic mulatto
- white actors playing a serious, sympathetic african american
- Luis Valdez
-
Chicano Theatre
El Teatro Campesino
Zoot Suit - David Henry Hwang
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M. Butterfly
Asian-American Theatre - Eve Ensler
-
The Vagina Monologues
Part of the Feminist Theatre - Gay & Lesbian Theatre
- Tony Kushner - Angels in America
- non-traditional casting
- casting reinforces canonizing works, marginalizes playwrights from under-represented groups
- Lorraine Hansberry
-
A Rasin' in the Sun
African-American Theatre - celebration
- tragedies meet this need by giving us admirable victums, sympathy
- "celebration" example
- Aristotle - "The Poetics"
- hamartia
- "error" or "miscalculation"
- melodrama
-
exaggerated characters and events
plots arranged to create pity and suspense
present a didactic argument for some moral or social point of view - sensation scenes
- grand scenic events
- quintessential characters
- the model of a group, represents a group
- stock character
-
repedative character
commedia dell'arte - crisis
- a moment where a character makes a major decision, which leads to a new direction
- intrigue
- uncertain outcome
- exposition
-
how we learn the story of the play
gives us details like: who, what, why, when, what is the conflict - episodic structure
-
big jumps in place and time
subplots - tradegy
- fear, pity, and suffering
- traditional or classic tradegy
-
the main characters are people of stature
the central character is caught in a series of inescapable circumstances - malapropisms
- words which sound like the right word but have entirely different meanings
- pun
- use of words with the same sound but have different meanings
- comedy of humours
- meaning “liquid,” and its use in the medieval and Renaissance medical theory that the human body held a balance of four liquids