Introducing Drama Dr Ghadeer Alhasan Ghadeer.alhasan@ju.eu.jo Drama • (in Greek, Dran, to act or perform) A form of literature that is written to be performed by actors on stage before an audience • We call the person who writes plays a playwright or dramatist. Subgenres in Drama • • • • • Tragedy Comedy Tragicomedy Farce Mystery Divisions in a Play • The main divisions of full-length plays are acts whose ends are indicated by lowering the curtains or turning up the houselights. Some full-length plays are further divided into scenes. • On the other hand, there are one-act plays which typically consist of a single act and a single scene. Reading Drama • Because plays are written to be performed, reading plays is somewhat different from reading poetry or fiction. • Reading drama demands more imagination than reading fiction. In this respect, the reader has much in common with the director or actor. • We re-create a play as we read it, imagining it as if it were performed: we cast characters; design the set, etc, according to cues in the text. Reading Drama • Drama does not usually have a narrator or mediator, someone standing between us and the events to tell us what is happening or to shape our responses. • Play texts instead use stage directions (the italicized descriptions of the set, character, and actions). • Exposition in drama (the explanation of the past and current situation) emerges here and there through the dialogue. Elements of Drama • Study pages 171-175 Stage Types • Proscenium theatre is designed as a room with the wall missing between the audience and stage (the so-called fourth wall) • The thrust theater is where the audience sits around three sides of the major acting area • Arena stage where the audience sits all the way around the acting area and plays make their entrances and exits through the auditorium. Proscenium theatre Thrust Theater Arena Stage Sets and Props • Sets refer to the design, decoration, and scenery • Props refer to articles or objects used on stage Tone • Tone in drama refers to the manner in which a line is to be delivered. e.g ‘intensely, angrily, etc’ • The reader must infer from the written language just how to read a line or what tone of voice to use. • At times, the stage directions will specify the tone of a line of dialogue Irony • Dramatic irony is when a character’s perception is contradicted by what the audience knows • Situational irony is when a character’s and audience’s expectations about will happen are contradicted by what actually does happen. • Verbal irony is when a statement implies a meaning quite different from its obvious, literal meaning. Drama and Poetic Devices • Aspects of poetry sometimes emerge in plays. After all, early plays were written in verse. • In monologues or extended speeches by one character may allow greater eloquence and may include revealing imagery and figures o speech. Which poetic devices can you recognize in this line? • ‘Death done come in this here house […] Done come walking in my house’ Symbols and Props • Simple actions or objects often have metaphorical significance or turn into symbols. • Effective plays use props which are symbolic object used by the actors performing in a play. Theme • Theme is a statement a work seems to make about a given subject; it is abstracted from the work by the reader or audience • To arrive at your statement of a theme, you need to consider all the elements together. • Consider the following aspects: The title of the play; general statements articulated by the characters (esp in monologues); any general truths the characters discover and change through; any insights suggested by the conflict and how it is resolved. (see checklist p. 182)