Dramatic Terms for
Studying and Staging Drama
Introduction: Welcome to the world of Drama and Stage! If you’ve
ever been to a magical night at the Theatre to see les Misersables, The
Lion King or Phantom of the Opera, you probably have a good idea of
how intoxicating and exciting it can be. Whether it’s Jude Law doing
Hamlet on London’s West End, Ian MacKellan (yes Gandalf!)
performing Waiting for Godot on Broadway, or your friends performing
the November play in the Chevron, there is an undeniable intensity and
excitement to the process of watching scenes acted out in person right
before your very eyes.
Like novels and poems, Drama has a specific set of terms and tools that
directors and actors will use as they rehearse, stage and perform a play.
Below are a list of some of the more important things to understand
about the study and staging of drama.
IMPORTANT TO KNOW: Before we begin with the terms, it is
important to understand something that may seem simple, but is in fact
fundamental to understanding drama… that is: Plays are meant to be
seen; they are not meant to be read! While the basic elements of story telling will still be evident (i.e.
character, conflict, plot), it is essential that you imagine how all of this this would be lighted, blocked,
acted and performed on stage!
Dramatic Terms: BASICS
Drama: The art of composing, writing, acting, or producing plays; a literary composition intended to
portray life or character or to tell a story usually involving conflicts and emotions exhibited through
action and dialogue, designed for theatrical performance.
Theatre: The imitation/representation of life, performed for other people; the performance of dramatic
literature; the milieu of actors and playwrights; the place that is the setting for dramatic performances.
Theatre literacy: The ability to create, perform, perceive, analyze, critique, and understand dramatic
performances.
Act: A section of a play. Shakespeare’s plays are always divided into five acts, though he himself didn’t
divide them in this way.
Scene: A small section of a play. Acts are usually divided into scenes.
Action: The core of a theatre piece; the sense of forward movement created by the sense of time and/or
the physical and psychological motivations of characters.
Dramatic Terms: SPEAKING
Dialogue: Speech between two or more characters on stage.
Monologue: A long speech delivered by a character during a dialogue.
Soliloquy: A stage convention in which a character is not speaking to anyone but is thinking out loud and
thus speaking the truth as far as he or she understands it.
Aside: Speech which only the audience can hear (a character's thoughts out loud) and which the other
characters on stage cannot hear.
Rhetoric: The art of persuasive or emotive speaking
Logos: an appeal to logic (math, statistics, numbers, historical examples/patterns, and reasoning)
Pathos: an appeal to emotions
Ethos: an appeal to trust the words, based on the speaker’s authority or qualifications
Dramatic Terms: SYLISTIC TERMS
Dramatic (Thematic Question): The central question that lingers on the audience's mind at the end of
each scene. Based on the past events that have unfolded on stage, the audience is wondering how these
events will affect the future of the play.
Tragedy: A type of drama in which the characters experience reversals of fortune,
usually for the worse. In tragedy, catastrophe and suffering await many of the
characters, especially the hero. The antagonist wins.
Comedy: A type of drama in which the ending is happy, positive… the
protagonist overcomes the antagonist and achieves some success or self
understanding in attaining their goals. The protagonist wins.
Tragic Hero: A privileged, exalted character of high repute, who, by virtue of a tragic flaw and fate,
suffers a fall from glory into suffering.
Tragic Flaw: A weakness or limitation of character, resulting in the fall of the tragic hero (proof that no
human is perfect).
Hubris: The flaw of incredible arrogance, or an overwhelming egotism that blinds the hero to reality.
Dramatic Irony: A time in the play when the audience
possesses knowledge that the character does not.
Catharsis: A release of emotions that the audience
experiences during a tragedy.
Tension: The atmosphere created by unresolved,
disquieting, or inharmonious situations that human
beings feel compelled to address.
Motivation: The reason why the character speaks and acts like he/she does.
Dramatic Terms: MOVEMENT
Blocking: Directorial choices as to where actors should stand or more while the action is taking place ion
stage.
Stage direction: A playwright's descriptive or interpretive comments that provide readers (and actors)
with information about the dialogue, setting, and action of a play. Modern playwrights, including Ibsen,
Shaw, Miller, and Williams tend to include substantial stage directions, while earlier playwrights typically
used them more sparsely, implicitly, or not at all.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: When an character on stage directly addresses the audience. So called
because, as a member of the audience, you can “see” 3 walls on stage; the fourth wall would be a
transparent one through which you are allowed to view the action. When a character speaks through this
wall and address the audience, he is “breaking” that fourth wall.
Gesture: The physical movement of a character during a play. Gesture is used to reveal character, and
may include facial expressions as well as movements of other parts of an actor's body. Sometimes a
playwright will be very explicit about both bodily and facial gestures, providing detailed instructions in
the play's stage directions.
Center (Stage): The center of the performance space, used
for placement of the actors and the set.
Downstage: The part of the stage closest to the audience,
so named because when stages were raked (slanted), an
actor walking toward the audience was literally walking
down.
Stage Right: On stage, the actors' right, assuming they are
facing the audience.
Stage Left: On stage, the actors' left, assuming they are facing the audience.
Dramatic Terms: TECHNICAL
Artistic choices: Selections made by theatre artists about situation, action, direction, and design in order
to convey meaning. Often includes choices about Lighting and Music.
Lighting: The choices a director makes involving how to light a
scene. This could include spotlighting, dimming or intensifying
light on certain parts of the stage, splitting the stage (dark and light),
colours, and many other techniques.
Music: Like in movies, music often adds a massive, if largely unnoticed aspect to the experience of drama. Music may be in the
background the whole time, or it may appear at important parts of
the play. It may repeat to emphasize a theme or a character; it may
intensify during the climax. Again, as always be aware and ready to
interpret how it is used.
Blackout: A common stage direction at the end of a scene or an act.
Unified production concept: A brief statement, metaphor, or
expression of the essential meaning of a play that orders and
patterns all the play's parts; a perceptual device used to evoke
associated visual and aural presuppositions serving to physicalize and unify the production values of a
play.
Costumes: like in real life, characters will dress in a manner that reveals their character, their interests,
the era the play is set in etc. Be aware of costumes which may be used symbolically… ex. black and
white in Othello.