Role playing, such as social roles – like lawyers, teachers, students, sister and brother – involve acting.
Theater, Pt. 1
Bishop Ch. 5
A Set
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Big River set
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Thinking about THEATER: Warm-Up Self-Test
Yes or no?
1. In history, women have frequently performed on stage.
2. Historically, theater began simply as popular entertainment to distract people from their everyday lives.
3. Role playing, such as social roles – like lawyers, teachers, students, sister and brother – involve acting.
4. We can learn about the conventions and norms of a society by analyzing its theatrical presentations.
Fill in the blank
5. Today traditional live theater has been transformed into what popular art form ______?
6. _______ is credited with the birth of acting by being the first choral member to step out of the chorus.
7. Ancient home of Western theater was the country _______, made up of several city states. (answers later in ppt)
Bishop: Ch 5.
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One Origin of Theater:
it grows from how we Play!
Involves:
- Pretense
- Conflict
- Play-acting.
Artifice reveals
Historical origins: Religious rituals and politics.
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DRAMA:
1. Helps imagination.
2. Helps make sense of people
3. Encourages empathy
4. Provides “vicarious” experience via narrative senses, vs. simple emotional one
5. Engages us in the dialogue about the
quality of our life and that of others.
serious play, written for performance on stage, television or radio.
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What is Theater?
– An attempt to reveal a vision of human life through
time, sound, and space.
– Not reality, instead an interpretation; acting is symbolic
– Communicates about the “human condition”
through the performance of a play…
– Draws from and illuminates every day life:
Playground – – – – – – – Parade
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What is the “human condition” ?
- the experience of being human
- what humans face in their lives and how they cope with these events
- the feelings that are associated with existence. Questions about:
- Mortality — meaning of life
=> Theater: part of our quest to understand ourselves and our place in the universe . . .
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PERFORMANCE:
Actions taken for benefit of someone else.
The audience participates with:
Indirect performance: mode whereby the audience watches interactions as though there were no audience at all.
Suspending disbelief:
members of the audience
“believe” the play
Live performances of plays–
Involve: Empathy (Identification)
Rapport (connection)
Dreams and plays.
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Empathy (identification) Rapport (sense of connection between actors and audience)
Audience watching performance by the Vittum Theater, Northwestern University Settlement Project.
www.nush.org/VittumTheater/Assets/Metro_Audience_Small.jpg
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Components of a Play
Vital to drama:
1. Pretense
2. Conflict: outer, inner
Aristotle’s Poetics:
1. plot
2. character
3. thought
4. diction
5. spectacle
6. song
Early Islamic portrayal
of Aristotle teaching
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Poetics: the literary or philosophical study of the basic principles, form and techniques of poetry or of other imaginative writing in general.
Aristotle teaching, from document in the British Library.
From: Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1976). Islamic Science:An Illustrated Study, World of Islam Festival Publishing Ltd.. ISBN 090503502X
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For Aristotle in his Poetics,
Drama should also involve:
Imitation
clarity
change of fortune
Unities What are they?
Catharsis : emotional cleansing, leading to clear-headed calm, should be achieved by the audience in:
– identifying with characters
– having a vicarious experience.
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Look at Aristotle’s Poetics:
1. PLOT
Structural development of play’s actions, their sequence and arrangement.
The mechanics of dramatic storytelling are not just events.
Plot needs logic, suspense.
Operates like a “climatic pyramid” – Exposition
– Complication
crises (decisions)
climax
– Dénouement
(resolution).
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Poetics: the literary or philosophical study of the basic principles, form and techniques of poetry or of other imaginative writing in general.
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