Resume of the Theory of Drama

HARY IRFANTRI

161011080

Class B

Introduction

Drama involving parts written for actors to perform. It can be performed in a variety of media: live
performance, film, or television. Drama is often combined with music and dance. Roughly there are two
kinds of drama, i.e.:

Closet drama, the script is written in the same form as plays, primarily designed to read;
Improvisational drama, having no set script, the actors perform depending on the situation.

Greek Drama

Three types of drama were composed in the city of Athens, i.e., tragedy, comedy, and satyrs.
Athenian tragedy begun as a part of religious ritual.
The dramas utilised musical performance called chorus.

Medieval Drama

Drama emerged in Europe as religious enactment of liturgy.

The first secular dramas, i.e. not related to any religious ritual, were historical play that often functioned
as an entertainment and propaganda.

Elizabethan and Jacobean English Drama

During these eras, drama was flowering in England.

Many of the plays written in verse, especially in iambic pentameter.
Drama was performed for enhancing the image of the Tudor monarchy.

Chinese Drama

Opera is popular in China.

Opera was performed for the emperor’s personal pleasure.
Operatic professionals are called as Disciples of the Pear Garden.
One of the most popular drama survives until now is Beijing opera.
During the Communist era, drama was performed to promote party goals and political philosophy.

Japanese Drama
 There are two types of drama in Japan:

Noh
It combines conventional drama aspects with musical and dancing performances.
The performers were generally male (including for female roles).
It is supported by the government, particularly the military.
Kyogen

It concentrates more on dialogue and less on music.

Uses of the Drama Today

Today the most usual purpose of drama is for entertainment.

It can also be used as an educational activity or for therapeutic purposes.

The Theory of Drama

Text and Performance

There is a strong family resemblance between drama and prose fiction. Both are narratives because both
present a story.

The true nature of drama text is its public performance.

A play is a multimedial narrative form designed to be staged in a public performance. It is multi-medial

because it uses both auditory and visual media. Audiences have to use their eyes and their ears.
Audience reactions are an integral parts of a performance, as well as have the immediate feedback effect.

Many people have roles in a drama performance:

A director is in charge of staging a play and of conducting the rehearsals.
A producer is responsible for managing the financial aspects of a production, the hiring of actors,
etc.
A stage manager is in charge of the disposition of the stage hands and of coordinating a
productions technical requirements.

Communication in Drama

Communication in drama in general involves several levels:

Nonfictional communication level is the outermost level designating the pragmatic (communication)
space in which an author writes the text of a play.
Fictional mediation level is an intermediate level which is activated in the drama that uses a narrator.
Fictional action is the level in which the characters communicate with each other.

From these levels, there are two types of drama:

Absolute drama, does not employ a fictional mediation level.

Epic drama, employs a fictional mediation level.

These terms need to be differentiated:

 A person is a real-life person.
A character is the imaginary person created by the drama author. It exists only in fictional text, usually
in the level of action.
A figure is a narrator.

Basic Technical Terms

Dramatic text subdivides into two main types:

Primary text, a play’s script consists of the speeches of the characters, including prologues and epilogues
if any. The main elements are:
Speech

Dialogue
Monologue

Soliloquy is the monologue when one character, i.e. the speaker itself, is the only actor on the
stage.
Aside is a remark that is not heard by the other characters on stage.

Monological aside is a remark that is not meant to be heard by any of the speaker’s
interlocutors.
Dialogical aside is addressed to a specific hearer, but is heard by nobody else present.
Aside ad spectatores is addressed directly to the audience, bypassing the convention of the
invisible fourth wall.
Secondary text, consists of all textual elements that do not belong to the primary text.

Dramatis personae, the list of characters’ brief explicit characterisation indicating role, social
status, etc.
Speech prefix is the name of the speaker introducing a speech.
stage direction is a descriptive of narrative passage describing the set, scenery, props,
costumes, and the nonverbal behaviour of the characters.

Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s plays were performed in basically three types of locations:

in public theaters
in private theaters
in various venues for special occasion
The Globe Theater was the playhouse for which most of Shakespeare’s plays were originally written.

None of Shakespeare’s plays was an original play in the modern sense of the word. He often combined
multiple sources, using both current translations of classical authors like Plautus, Seneca, Plutarch,
Ovid, Ariosto, Boccaccio, and Chaucer as well as contemporary authors.
Genres of Shakespeare’s works:

comedies, histories, and tragedies.

romances.
roman plays.
On average, Shakespeare wrote two or three plays per year.
 Shakespearean language is a variant of Early Modern English, whose main characteristics, from modern
point of view, are variability and flexibility.

Textual criticism is a method of establishing an authoritative version of a text by weighing all textual
evidence, by studying the transmission of the text, its printing condition, etc.
Blank verse is an un-rhymed iambic pentameter line.

Action, Story, and Plot

Action is the sum of events occurring on a play’s level of action. Sometimes it is possible to distinguish
the primary story line from other external events that take place before the beginning or after the end of
the play.
Story is the chronological sequence of events.
Plot is the logical and causal structure of a story.
Plot is often associated with the action of the protagonist and antagonist.
Synopses is a plot-oriented content paraphrase.