Theatre Terms
Terms
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- Audition
- a test of the suitability of a performer for a role in a production or company; also called tryouts
- Cast
- all the actors performing in a given play
- Gesture
- any movement of shoulder, arm, hand, leg, foot, or head by an actor to convey meaning
- Relation to characters
- an establishment of relationships in a play so that actors who play characters connected by blood, marriage, friendship, or conflict will act as though they have been involved in actual relationships and will not give the impression they just met in rehearsal
- Decorum
- a manner appropriate to time, place, and character; this includes the way of walking, sitting, talking, gesturing, and dressing
- Beat
- a pause or a break during a scene; a character's use of one tactic in the context of a play/scene/act
- Actor
- a male or female theatrical performer
- Understudy
- an actor who has a role in a production and who learns and rehearses an additional role, so that he or she might perform it in the absence of the actor who was originally cast
- Role
- a part in a play
- Obstacle
- a character or situation in a play that creates conflict, delaying or preventing another character from achieving an objective
- Ensemble playing
- the type of acting in which a cast works as a team to create a total effect rater than a group of individual performances
- Dramatis Personae
- the roles in a play
- Legitimate Theatre
- a term usually meaning the stage in general, as opposed to film. In prior days, it referred to pure drama without music or dance; the origin of the term is pre-1900 English, when theatres had to be licensed
- Mugging
- using exaggerated facial expressions for comic effect
- Take it down
- an instruction from the director to an actor to reduce the energy, volume, or intensity in his or her line reading
- Voice projection
- control of loudness so that even those in the rear of the audience can hear and understand the dialogue of the play
- Ham
- an unskilled actor who overacts
- Direct address
- speaking directly to the audience
- Blocking
- determining the basic movements of the actors during a play, as set by the director and/or actors
- Standby
- an actor who learns and rehearses a role, so that he or she might perform it in the absence of the actor who was originally cast; this actor does not otherwise appear in the play
- Small work
- subtle facial expressions and gestures used to illuminate character
- Brighten
- a direction to an actor to read a line with more liveliness
- Connection
- the interdependence of actor to actor in a performance; when this is achieved, there is attention, response, and intuition about what the other actor is thinking and feeling
- Mime
- a performance using gestures and body movements without words
- Company
- a group of performers joined together for the purpose of a production
- Intention
- the objective an actor has in a scene; to achieve this objective, the character must overcome an obstacle provided by the antagonist or by circumstances
- "Break a leg"
- a traditional greeting to an actor, given just before a performance; Born of the superstition that if one wishes "good luck," the perverse gods will send the opposite, but if one wishes misfortune, the gods will be tricked into sending an actor good luck
- Gimmick
- a device, bit of stage business, catch phrase, or vocal quirk used to attract and hold the audience's attention
- Gypsy
- a member of the chorus, so called because of his or her nomadic existence, moving from show to show or from place to place on the road with the show
- Concentration
- the actor's focus on the moment of the play in which he or she is acting
- Strike
- to remove a prop or piece of scenery from the stage; to deconstruct the set and equipment at the conclusion of a production
- To do a take
- to look at something and react with facial expression or body language; often for humorous effect
- Bit part
- a small role
- Call board
- a bulletin board placed backstage upon which schedules, sign-in sheets, announcements, and even reviews are posted for the cast and crew
- Repertoire
- all the parts an actor has played, or all the plays he or she is familiar with
- Take direction
- an actor's ability to understand and respond accurately to suggestions about characterization given by the director
- Muff
- to scramble or alter the words in a line
- Character actor
- an actor who specializes in playing supporting roles
- George Spelvin
- a false name used in the play program to conceal from the audience that an actor is playing two roles
- Shtick
- a piece of stage business, usually designed for a quick and easy laugh
- Call back
- the second phase in an audition process in which actors are asked to return for further readings and/or interviews
- Character
- a role in a play
- Ad-lib
- to improvise something--dialogue, stage business--not given specifically in the script; this is often done in response to an emergency, such as a forgotten line, a forgotten entrance, a missing prop, or malfunctioning scenery; sometimes the script calls for these unspecified lines (ex. "The crowd utters varied greeting to the newcomer."), and appropriate lines are decided on in rehearsal and kept throughout the run of the play
- Hit your mark
- a direction for an actor to go to a certain place onstage and deliver a line
- Fourth wall
- the invisible wall of a set through which the audience sees the action of a play
- Headshot
- a photograph of a actor's face
- Bombast
- speech that is too emotional or inflated for the occasion
- Improvisation
- a spontaneous scene or episode created by an actor or actors without a script
- Double take
- to look and seem not to see anything out of the ordinary and ten look again with enhanced recognition and surprise, usually used for comic effect
- Interpretation
- the discovery and determination of literary meaning or character intention
- Jump lines
- when an actor speaks one or more lines ahead, causing confusion for other cast members and at times, omitting crucial information for the audience or an entrance cue
- Choices
- the decisions of the actor or director as to the way a character in a play ill be interpreted in a given production
- Cold reading
- a reading of the script done by actors who haven't previously rehearsed the play
- Imitation
- the art of presenting behavior observed in others
- Double casting
- the practice of casting two actors or sets of actors who ten alternate in performances of a role
- Motivation
- the reason a character does or says something
- In the moment
- living the actions and words of a scene and not anticipating what comes next
- Mark
- the spot, literally on the floor or established during rehearsal, from which actors deliver their lines
- Speeches
- the lines said by an actor each time he or she speaks
- Principals
- the largest roles in a play; the leading characters
- Slapstick
- comedy involving exaggerated physical violence, clumsiness, or activities
- Pants part
- a male role played by a female
- Relation to objects
- an establishment of relationships in a play so that actors using certain objects, interacting with furniture, or wearing certain clothes will understand and recreate the character's relationships with said objects
- Lead
- the principal characters in a play
- Prior life
- the presumed life of a character before his or her appearance in a scene or play
- Fluffed line
- a mishandled line of dialogue--that is, a line not said at all, one that has been muffed ("you gold oat" for "you old goat"), or one that is delivered at the wrong time
- Swing
- a standby for an ensemble role
- Objective
- the goal a character has in a particular scene or throughout a play
- Portfolio
- a folder containing headshots, a resume, reviews and other evidence of a performer's work, assembled for presentation at interviews with prospective employers
- Make it larger
- a direction given to an actor to make the delivery of a line less subtle and more energetic
- Doubling
- the playing of one or more character in a play by the same actor
- Create a role
- to be the first actor to play a role in a new play
- Off Book
- when an actor has the lines of his or her part completely memorized
- Upstaging
- using any sort of stage business, gesture, facial expression, or vocalization to steal the focus of the audience from another actor on stage
- Timing
- the pacing, tempo, or rhythm of lines, actions, gestures, stage business, lighting cues, sound cues, etc.
- Cue
- the line or action immediately preceding an entrance
- Stage Business
- incidental activity of a character within a scene--as opposed to the blocking
- Line reading
- the manner in which an actor delivers a line: the inflection, tone, volume, pace and rhythm
- Superobjective
- the character's long-range objective during the course of a play (Stanislavsky)
- Cheat
- to turn the body out, partially toward the audience, while appearing to talk directly to another character on stage, thus allowing the audience to see the facial expressions of the performers
- Lines
- the written words in a script that are intended to be spoken aloud by the characters
- Typecasting
- the casting of roles in a play by choosing actors who most closely resemble the physical and personality descriptions of the characters
- Histrionics
- an exaggeratedly dramatic performance filled with excessive emotion and affectation
- Freeze
- to remain motionless onstage for a predetermined number of beats, especially for a laugh after a funny line, or in tableau fashion as the curtain descends or lights fade
- Casting
- the choice of actors to play particular roles in a play or movie