Drama Term Tuesday #36

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Korean Drama

An elaborate, sophisticated drama with long traditions and origins in ritual and religion.

Silla period - 578 BC - 935 AD featured

Kommu: masked sword dance about the death of a young warrior.

Muaemu: dance without masks

Ch’oyongmu: grotesque masked dance drama

Koryo period - 918 - 1392 AD featured mainly puppet plays, acrobatic dances, but not a fully featured developed drama tradition.

Choson period - 1392 - 1910

P’ansori: one man operetta accompanied on the pug, double headed drum.

Kwangdae - actor - used three elements:

Sori - singing

Aniri - narration and dialogue

Ballim - acting restricted to emotional expression of joy.

Korean masked drama had two major forms

Purakje - village festival plays

Sanda-togam-g¨uk - court plays that later came to be performed in theatres, included dance, singing, music, mime and exchange of repartee; used elaborate and colourful masks made of dried gourds or paper which were traditionally burned at the end of each performance. Plays were collaboratively developed and transmitted by oral traditions.

Khoktu kaksi - traditional humorous Korean puppet theatre featuring animal and human characters.

Hahoe mask dance drama - originally had ritual significance but in recent times has mainly entertainment focus. Features various allegorical characters represented by masks not dissimilar to the commedia dell’arte use of stock characters and masks. Focused on class and social distinctions in humorous ways.

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Drama Term Tuesday #35

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Scene

act

Divisions of dramatic texts into sections.

In traditional drama, dramatic action was divided into a succession of inter-related scenes, and further shaped into sections called acts. In Aristotelian drama, the action of the play was divided into five acts. Although these divisions have been applied to plays, it is not always possible to set such formal and formulaic limits to drama; frequently the structure of drama is more organic and less schematic.

Some directors and actors also further divided scenes into beats, naturally occuring sections which make a whole statement or point and which contribute to the overall impact of the scene.

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Drama Term Tuesday #27

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Low comedy acting

Physical rather than intellectual comedy; in Greek drama, Old Comedy is most often characterised as low comedy; low comedy typically features drunkenness, disputes and quarreling, infidelity, vulgarity, coarseness and ribaldry, gossip and character assassination, stock characters and slapstick and trickery.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts.

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Drama Term Tuesday #26

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Fable

A deceptively simple telling of a story that contains the key concepts, ideas or values of a dramatic text; often metaphoric or allegorical.

The term was used by Brecht as part of the critical and analytical processing of plot in developing and rehearsing drama.

Articulating the fable of a piece is a useful writing and rehearsal discipline enabling actors and directors to identify and distill the essence of a dramatic text.

A fable is also used in literature to describe a short tale with a moral, a story about supernatural or extraordinary events and people, a legend or myth.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts.

Drama Term Tuesday #25

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Irish Drama

Early Irish-Gaelic culture had no known distinctive drama forms but relied on epic, saga and lyric. It was not until the colonisation of Ireland by English culture and the subsequent struggle for an Irish identity that drama emerged as a driving force.

The establishment of the Irish Literary Theatre movement in 1897 and the translation of Irish heroic legend and peasant tales to the stage through writers such as Lady Gregory, Synge and Yeats proved to be a powerful catalyst to Irish drama and establishment of theatres such as The Abbey. Irish drama has been driven by a need to replace the caricature of the “stage Irish stock character” and a search to find poetic non-realistic theatre that restored primacy of feeling. It served political purposes and has often been the centre of controversy.

Irish drama is dominated by the “sovereignty of words”, the capacity to use language with lyrical and poetic intent to shape and construct meaning, “we can make this country whatever we want to be by saying so”.

In the 20th century, Irish drama could be characterised as realist drama in poetic transformation.

John Milington Synge (1871 - 1909) Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea; Sean O’Casey (1880-1964) The Shadow of the Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts

Drama Term Tuesday #24

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Post Modernism

Movement in the arts and drama - frequently avant-garde and experimental - that gives equal (or more) weighting of nonverbal codes, conventions and language with traditional verbal language approaches; post modernism is also built on a different dramatic action/audience relationship giving precedence to the interpretations and participation of audiences (as in reader response theories of literature) rather than the interpretation of playwrights, directors and actors.

Postmodernism challenges single interpretations - the concept of a Grand Narrative that provides one point of view or explanation. Meanings are individual and relative to the context of the person making the interpretation; there is no external set of values that determines meaning. As a consequence, Postmodernism is skeptical of institutions and established or hegemonic ways of thinking and acting; agency and personal identity is valued over conformity and power structures are challenged.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts

Drama Term Tuesday #23

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Juxtaposition

When dramatic action holds up side by side different, generally contrasting, ideas or characters; the power of juxtaposition lies in its capacity to allow an audience to draw conclusions, to explore dramatic irony; juxtaposition is frequently more than the sum of the individual parts; juxtaposition uses contrast and dislocation to provoke fresh understanding and dramatic impact.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts

Drama Term Tuesday #20

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Dada

A nihilistic art movement, which began during the First World War and thrived in France, Switzerland, Germany and The USA. The movement developed from disgust and despair over the war and was founded on theories of irrationality, anarchy and cynicism as well as a rejection of the cultural standards of art from the past. Dadaist theatre and art is often referred to as anti-art.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts

Drama Term Tuesday #19

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Unities

Unities of time, place and action

The three principles of dramatic structure.

Unity of time: action in drama takes place in “real” or actual elapsed time; in some traditions, unity of time means that dramatic action takes place within 24 hours.

Unity of place: action takes place in one location.

Unity of action: Drama is focused through one plot with no subsidiary plots or subplots.

Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts