HISTORY OF DRAMA Learning Target: To understand the conventions of drama for each era. To understand...
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Transcript of HISTORY OF DRAMA Learning Target: To understand the conventions of drama for each era. To understand...
HISTORY OF DRAMALearning Target: To understand the conventions of drama for each era. To understand the definitions and functions
of tragedy and comedy
CLASSICALMEDIEVAL
RENAISSANCENEOCLASSIC/MODERN
CITY DIONYSUS• Festival honors
Dionysus• March or April• Dramatic
competition• Celebrate civic
pride• Tragedy,
Comedy
MEDIEVAL DRAMA
• Peak during 14th and 15th century• No permanent theater• Reenactments of Bible stories,
stories of saints, celebrations of holy days
• Productions moved from churches to outside community productions
RENAISSANCE THEATER
• First permanent theater built in 1576 – The Theater
• The greatest period of drama since Greeks
• Professional troupes of players• Shakespeare greatest
playwright
RENAISSANCE DRAMA• CHANGES in
staging: a building, professional actors, support of monarchy, inventive drama
• Yard, stage, gallery, few props, close contact between audience/actors
Suggestions
• Dr. Faustus
• Twelfth Night
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• As You Like It
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Othello
NEOCLASSIC/MODERN DRAMA
• At beginning, theaters more intimate – 700
• Puritan influence• Development of satire, comedy of
manners, domestic topics• Reflect current culture and comment
on it• Productions more refined, more
elaborate
NEOCLASSIC/MODERN STAGE
Proscenium archPit in front of
stageLighting changesUse of a backstage
areaActors wardrobesActing trendsArchitectural
changes
NEOCLASSIC/MODERN DRAMA
• PURITAN• Satire• Sentimental
Romances• Moral domestic plays• NEOCLASSIC• Social commentary• Comedy of Manners
• REALISM• Stage mimic real life
or aspects of life• REACTION
AGAINST REALISM
• Surrealism• Symbolism• Expressionism• Theater of the Absurd
Suggestions• Death of Salesman
• Wilde – Lady Windemere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance
• Six Degrees of Separation
• Eugene O’Neill – Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape
• Wendy Wasserstein – The Sisters Rosensweig, The Heidi Chronicles, Isn’t It Romantic
• Neil Simon – Brighton Beach Memoirs, The Goodbye Girl, Lost in Yonkers – and so many more
• Cyrano De Bergerac
• The Real Thing – Stoppard
• Waiting for Godot
• Love Letters
COMEDY• DEFINITION –A comedy is a play
that is initiated through a potentially catastrophic event that creates chaos for the characters in the play, but it ends happily with a healthy, amicable armistice between the protagonist and society.
TYPES OF COMEDY
• POPULAR – slapstick, sight gags, shock value
• PASTORAL – idyllic, idealized version of country life, romance
• NEW COMEDY – focus on ordinary person and ups and downs of life, insight into human nature
CHARACTERISTICS OF COMEDY
MULTIPLE PLOTS
MISUNDER-STANDINGS
SATIRE
LOVE – Often source of conflict, plot, theme
IMAGERY – Significant, especially with Classical and Shakesperean
PURSUIT OF WRONG VALUE; QUEST
POTENTIAL TRAGEDY
MULTIPLE LEVELS OF HUMOR
DECEIVING APPEARANCES
MAN TO ASS REESTABLISH HARMONYat end
MORE CHARACTERS
STUDY OF COMEDY
• Look for characteristics of comedy in the what you study.
• Consider type(s) of comedy for each.• Think about staging the play.• Apply what you know about drama,
tragedies, and comedies to what we read and what you study independently.
TRAGEDY …presents courageous individuals who
confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure,
defeat, and even death. The action of a tragedy is focused on a difficult time in the hero’s life when decisions or actions
cause chaos and only through the protagonist’s fall can the world of the
tragedy be righted again.
ARISTOTLE’S DEFINITION• “An imitation of an action that is
serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artful ornament, the several kinds begin found in separate parts of the play, in the form of action, not of narration; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these and similar emotions.”
TRAGEDY
• The purpose of a tragedy is to engender catharsis in the audience by their experience of emotions for the major character and his/her situation and errors. Thus, by viewing the play, the audience is purged of these negative emotions.
TRAGEDY• Tragic hero
Great person, extraordinary
Fate of state Fall is result of a flaw or
misunderstanding or underestimation
Great but humanEncounter with failure
allows hero to display greatness
Fall results in reversal
TragedySerious actionDramatic -often poetic
languageUse of images,
symbols, stock characters, irony, archetypes
Resolution will include “end” of tragic hero and reestablishing of order
STUDY OF TRAGEDY
• Look for characteristics of tragedy
• Consider elements and the definition of tragedy
• Think about staging the play.
• Apply what you know about drama, tragedies, and comedies