Drama Term Tuesday #33
/Empathy
Ability to understand and share the feelings of another person. Key to acting and being an audience member in drama.
Drama Term Tuesday #32
/Booth Theatres
A temporary portable theatre used throughout Europe from about 15th Century; derived from rows of raised booths or pageants in with Biblical episodes were played. Punch and Judy puppet shows at the British seaside continue the booth tradition.
Excerpt from Drama and Theatre Key Terms and Concepts. Continue the conversation on facebook and twitter.
Drama Term Tuesday #31
/Alexander Technique
A movement technique developed by Australian actor, F.M. Alexander in the late 19th century. Alexander Technique is a method designed to educator, or re-educate, people on physical ‘habits’ which limit movement, and help correct these in order to help the body move with ease, freedom and balance.
An important element of the Alexander Technique is the way thoughts influence movement and how ideas can be expressed in movement, e.g. by thinking about loosening a muscle it will loosen.
Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts. Continue the conversation on facebook and twitter.
Drama Term Tuesday #30
/Revenge tragedies
Drama based on retribution and avenging wrongs. Derived from the Roman playwright Seneca and influential in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama (e.g. Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy); Shakespeare’s Hamlet is an example of revenge tragedy (though interestingly, it also challenges many of the conventions of this form).
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Drama Term Tuesday #29
/Kosky (Barrie Kosky)
(1967 - )
Influential Australian born theatre and opera director. Eclectic in approach often borrowing from European Expressionism, Kosky works in a layered, excessive presentational style.
Excerpt from Drama Key Terms and Concepts.
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Drama Term Tuesday #28
/Expressionist Theatre
Expressionism
A 20th Century theatre movement that seeks to show inner psychological reality through the distortion of scenery, lighting, costuming and acting styles; key playwrights include Strindberg and Wederkind; major influence on design and conceptualisation of silent films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
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Drama Term Tuesday #27
/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
/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
/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
/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.
