drama Flashcards
(29 cards)
comedy
Lighter in tone, comedies are intended to make the audience laugh and usually come to a happy ending. Comedies place offbeat characters in unusual situations causing them to do and say funny things. Comedy can also be sarcastic, poking fun at serious topics. There are also several sub-genres of comedy, including romantic comedy, sentimental comedy, comedy of manners, and tragic comedy—plays in which the characters take on tragedy with humour in bringing serious situations to happy endings
tragedy
Based on darker themes, tragedies portray serious subjects like death, disaster, and human suffering in a dignified and thought-provoking way. Rarely enjoying happy endings, characters in tragedies, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, are often burdened by tragic character flaws that ultimately lead to their demise.
farce
Featuring exaggerated or absurd forms of comedy, a farce is a nonsensical genre of drama in which characters intentionally overact and engage in slapstick or physical humour.
melodrama
An exaggerated form of drama, melodramas depict classic one-dimensional characters such as heroes, heroines, and villains dealing with sensational, romantic, and often perilous situations.
opera
This versatile drama genre combines theatre, dialogue, music, and dance to tell grand stories of tragedy or comedy. Since characters express their feelings and intentions through song rather than dialogue, performers must be skilled actors and singers
drama
The portrayal of fictional or non-fictional events in theatre, film, radio, or television.
thalia
The Greek Muse of Comedy, depicted as one of the two masks of drama.
melpomene
The Greek Muse of tragedy, the other mask of drama.
comedy
The humorous genre of drama intended to keep the audience laughing on the way to the play’s happy ending.
tragedy
The portrayal of darker subjects like death, disaster, betrayal, and human suffering.
farce
An over-the-top form of purposely over-acted and exaggerated comedy.
melodrama
The depiction of simple classic characters like heroes and villains dealing with sensational, romantic, and often perilous situations.
opera
The artful combination of dialogue, music, and dance to tell grand stories of tragedy or comedy.
monologue
a distinctive theatrical form of speech. It’s usually an extended passage, sometimes addressed to others, but more often there is no one else on stage.
the chorus
In Greek drama, the Chorus was a group; but in early English drama it was an individual. The Chorus tells us what we are going to see, and what has not been presented on stage, and what has not been presented on stage. The Chorus can also involve itself in exposition, as in telling us about the incidents that happened before the play began.
soliloquy
a speech by a character, who is usually alone on the stage and who explores his or her thoughts, feelings and intentions. Soliloquies often start or finish a scene.
public soliloquy
A character talks directly to the audience. Because characters speak of their plans in this way, public soliloquies are particularly fitted to villains.
private soliloquy
the audience overhears or listens to a character’s innermost thoughts
an aside
the character turns away from other characters and addresses the audience directly. The speech is usually brief and the convention is that no one on stage hears it.
in medias res
means ‘in the middle of things.’ It demands beginning a narrative in the very middle of its action from some vital point when most of the action has occurred. The author then freely moves backward and forward at his leisure, connecting the dots of the story. All the explanations regarding the significance of setting, plot, characters and the minutiae of the story are gradually revealed in the form of a character’s dialogues or thoughts, or flashbacks. The setting and environment also contribute to add to the details of the action introduced at the beginning of the story.
Writers use this device to grab the attention of the audience from the outset; we feel confused, so we have to concentrate to piece together what is happening
burlesque
a dramatic parody, action that deliberately mocks the higher and more serious conventions of theatre by subjecting it to exaggeration, distortion and inappropriate stylistic treatment. Few plays are entirely burlesques, but sometimes individual scenes have the function of burlesquing the loftier parts of a play.
metatheatricality
means ‘theatre about theatre’, e.g. when a character in a play makes reference to a play, a stage, an actor or any other element of drama, thereby reminding us that they are part of a play that we are watching. This momentarily challenges the suspension of disbelief that is otherwise involved in watching drama on stage.
farce
a comedy in which everything is absolutely absurd. This usually involves some kind of deception or miscommunication. Slapstick humour and physical comedy are also common features.
Although most farces are comedies, there is such a thing as a “tragic farce.” In a tragic farce, the humour is always very bleak, but still present
stock character
a dramatic or literary character representing a generic type in a conventional, simplified manner and recurring in many fictional works. Some stock characters incorporate more than one stock character
