Final

Question 1

What is the root meaning of identification?

Answer 1

Comes from Latin root idem meaning the same-literally means realizing a sameness

Question 2

What is story? (in relation to the storyteller)

Answer 2

what a storyteller knows (conflict of the known and
the unknown, aiming for resolution)

Question 3

What is action?

Answer 3

what can be done or what it is to do—act, acting
(conflict of doers—boxing match, aiming for resolution)

Question 4

what it another word for “to be in conflict” (considering what
happens when there is no resolution to be found)
* Often combined as the story of what people do when in
conflict and seeking resolution

Answer 4

Argument

Question 5

What is agon (where does it come from?)

Answer 5

Agon is the Ancient Greek word for trial, contest, conflict
* Root of the word “agony”
* Also protagonist (deuteragonist, tritagonist), antagonist
* Ancient Greek tragedy (and comedy) exactly fit that definition: the
story of what people do when in conflict and seeking resolution

Question 6

Argument, where does the root Argue come from?

Answer 6

“Argue” comes from a root verb meaning “to make clear”
or “to brighten,” but the same root word (in Latin) can
mean “to make noise,” ”to prattle,” esp. by much talk!

Question 7

What does rhetoric mean ?

Answer 7

Basically means the practices of being a speaker
-speakers were especially needed in the courts, the
councils, and the public forum. Thus rhetoric has been
considered in three branches—forensic, deliberative, and
epideictic
* Art of persuasion. A kind of argument that is about belief (as opposed to logic, which is about proof)
* Guiding your audience to a new or different way of thinking,
using persuasive arguments

Question 8

Which play is a good example of engage an audience in the terms of argument, as a healthy exercise of “thinking through,” but then leave the audience with an unresolved question?

Answer 8

TRUE WEST

Question 9

Otherness, where does the root word Other come from/mean and what is the definition?

Answer 9

Sanskrit- meaning other, * Webster’s definition 1.a. being the one (as of two or more) left;
b. being the ones distinct from those first mentioned. 2. not the
same; different. 3. Additional.

Question 10

Where does the word Alien have roots? And how does this relate to the alienation effect?

Answer 10

Comes from from Latin alius, other. “From elsewhere.”
* “Alienation effect” (or Verfremdungseffekt)—a term introduced by
Bertolt Brecht to describe a deliberate break in the audience’s
“identification” with the characters. A reminder that the “reality”
you are seeing in a play is an artificial construct.
* The point is that the audience should not just feel for the
character who is suffering but should also be thinking about
what are the social conditions that led to the suffering. WAITING FOR GODOT

Question 11

What does metaphor mean?

Answer 11

Literally means “a carrying across.” One thing
stands for another

Question 12

Art (fr. L. ars, skill, fr. Gk. arariskein to fit)—
akin to “arm,” as in armor

Answer 12

OK

Question 13

What does perform mean?

Answer 13

literally means to form, or furnish,
thoroughly. One who performs in the special
context known as the theater is to the ordinary
one who forms (e.g. the carpenter) as the
actor is to the acter

Question 14

What did Talent originally mean?

Answer 14

orig. meant a unit of weight or money

Question 15

Teche is the root of the word technology. What is it’s meaning?

Answer 15

It is an ancient word for art in the sense of “things made”

Question 16

What is the word Aristotle
developed for “special” creations in language and
story, in particular for drama.

Answer 16

Poiesis (root of the word poetry), Literal meaning of
poieisis is “making.

Question 17

Act”—from L. actus, action doing, from L.
agere, to drive, do; akin to Gk. agein, to drive,
lead

Answer 17

OK

Question 18

Agent definition?

Answer 18

one who acts or does

Question 19

What is the word that means ”the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power”

Answer 19

Agency

Question 20

What is the base definition of Objective?

Answer 20

an action in a drama

Question 21

What is the Greek word for “the answerer,” the one being
interrogated, as, for example, before a judge

Answer 21

Hypokrites-(krites)
Hypokrites becomes the first word for “actor”—
cognate with our word “hypocrite”

Question 22

What is the Greek word for “mask,” also means “person”

Answer 22

Prosopon

Question 23

Prosopopoeia (which is the poiesis, i.e. poetry, of
the prosopon or mask) is a figure in poetry in
which the poet speaks in the voice of another

Answer 23

OK

Question 24

What is the Latin word for mirror and what does it mean?

Answer 24

Speculum, which is also a device to look within.
An actor who tries to find what is inside the mask is literally
speculating—or introspecting, a Renaissance concern

Question 25

What does Persona mean in Latin?

Answer 25

Latin for “mask,” but also “person” That is, the same linkage as in Greek

Question 26

According to Aristotle, an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions, is called a what?

Answer 26

A tragedy

Question 27

Act (as in Act of Congress) An act has definition—in Congress, this is an agreed-upon written form. There might be a “push” for something or a “leaning,” but until there is written form, it’s not an act An act has intention An act has execution Note that 3 branches of Congress control different aspects of the act. Supreme Court looks over definition, Congress operates from intention, and executive puts in motion.

Answer 27

OK

Question 28

Intention + Motion=?

Answer 28

Action---* Intention without motion = wish * Motion without intention = accident * Action is a merging of motion and intention * Intention implies trajectory to goal (telos) * Motion supplies the execution

Question 29

What does verbatim mean and what are it's roots. (verbatim theater)

Answer 29

Verbatim = in the exact words (verbum is Latin for “word”)

Question 30

What should you think of Agon as ?

Answer 30

Conflict

Question 31

What does Agon mean in Greek?

Answer 31

Agon means contest, trial in Greek (root of “agony”)(think of agon as conflict) * (Gk. Tragedies orig. performed in competition) * Courtroom analogy—actor as “answerer” (hypokrites = hypo- under + krites, judge) under interrogation, giving testimony * Criticism, from Greek krites, judge, from earlier root krinein, to separate, sort out

Question 32

What is the root meaning of the word drama?

Answer 32

To do

Question 33

What is a general definition of Kairos?

Answer 33

KAIROS is a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action : the opportune and decisive moment.

Question 34

Kairos * Greek word meaning “the fitting,” orig. from rhetoric * The fitting, the appropriate, what will work, what hits the mark * Ripeness, seasonableness, “right time” (“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven...”) * The timely, the opportune * The actor’s work is in the time of the story. It unfolds the story in time. Hence the actor’s art is all about kairos.

Answer 34

OK

Question 35

What is the superobjective?

Answer 35

the sum total of all of a character’s objectives, traceable through the “spine” or “throughline” of the character

Question 36

*An actor’s awareness of his/her throughline ultimately coincides with a recognition of how the character’s actions figure as significant points in the plot (plot = arrangement of incidents) * The larger “point” of a role (and of an actor’s work within that role) merges with the telos of the act of storytelling which the play embodies * An overarching or spinal expression of the merging of the actor’s tasks with the storyteller’s telos lies in the term superobjective

Answer 36

OK

Question 37

Final image of True West = the dark eyes of the actors » The characters see in each other the darkness of what this story knows as only a story can know » And only through the eyes of the actors can the knowing be brought to the audience

Answer 37

OK

Question 38

What is a plot according to Aristotle?

Answer 38

plot is “the arrangement of the incidents” or “events

Question 39

What is the root sense of the Greek word drama?

Answer 39

a verb meaning “to do”

Question 40

Plot and fate » The plot, as the sequence of events, will take all the characters (and the reader/audience) from the beginning to the end. » If you are a character in a play, there is no escaping that end. » Thus it is like fate. » To be in plot brings a character to a telos » To be a character drives a plot to a telos » Telos—fr. Greek for end, goal, target, point » “To what end is this play written?”

Answer 40

OK

Question 41

What is the greek meaning of telos ?

Answer 41

end, goal, target, point * For the character, telos is important because it expresses an intention, goal (get married in Earnest; “a positive act” in Hedda) * For the OTHER character, telos is important because it expresses an intention or goal that might get in the way (become obstacle) * For the playwright, telos is important because it expresses how the plot ends (or on a smaller scale how the scene ends), which reflects what the story knows (something about the importance of fabrication or fiction in art in Earnest; something about the danger of idealism, as opposed to realism, in Hedda)

Question 42

Superobjective “[The superobjective is] the inner essence, the all- embracing goal, the objective of all objectives, the concentration of the entire score of the role, of all its major and minor units. The superobjective contains the meaning, the inner sense, of all the subordinate objectives of the play. In carrying out this one superobjective, you have arrived at something even more important, superconscious, ineffable, which is the spirit of [the writer] himself, the thing that inspired him to write, and which inspires an actor to act.”

Question 43

What are Aristotle's 6 elements

Answer 43

Plot(mythos), Character(ethos), Language(Lexis), Music(melopoiea), Thought(dianoia), Spectacle (opsis)

Question 44

* Plot (mythos)-a small area of ground, a lot—one’s lot (as in lottery, as in the casting of lots or drawing lots, i.e. drawing straws)—one’s destiny or Fate (Gk. Moira, from the three Fates or Moirae, who measured the length of a person’s life) myth or story, but in Aristotle it means plot, the arrangement of events. Plot (mythos), according to Aristotle, is the soul (psyche) of tragedy. MYTHOS is Aristotle’s word for plot. He chooses the word that means story but gives it the specific definition (for drama): “the arrangement of the incidents”

Question 45

Character (ethos) fr. L. character mark, distinctive quality, fr. Gk. charassein, to scratch, engrave) ETHOS (Gk. for character), from which “ethics.” ETHOS is Aristotle’s word for character. ROLE (fr. OF, rolle, lit. the “roll” which contained the actor’s PART, that is a portion of a play)

Question 46

“Thought” (dianoia)(the Gk. word is dianoia, which might be literally translated as what crosses the mind) I have insisted that this does not mean “message” or “moral.” I have also challenged the idea that Aristotle meant something like what we mean by “theme.” Theme is too static a concept for drama. Instead, I have proposed the translation “thinking through,” which relates the effort to make meaning to the temporal progression of the play—that it moves, and moves us—also reminding us that the process is active. A play does not deliver a thing, which is its meaning; instead, it engages and involves us in a process, which is meaningful. We think through the play as the characters think through the play. The significant points for the characters in the play, supplied by the plot, are also the significant points for the audience, where our thinking must adjust to new circumstances.

Question 47

What does the greek word for language, lexis, mean

Answer 47

Lexis means the particular use of language, in its poetic and discursive forms) The character, in thinking through the plot, uses language. (This is especially true of ancient drama, which is filled with monologue.) By means of the language—the expressed thought—the character’s thinking becomes available to the audience, but only in time, only as the play goes on

Question 48

Music (melopoiea)-the Gk. word is melopoia, in other words the “poetry” (poiesis) of music (melos), but the reference is both to the use of musical accompaniment and to the music that is in the language through the use of meter and other poetic devices

Question 49

Spectacle (opsis) the Gk. word is opsis, which has the word for “eye” at its root)

Question 50

What is the root meaning of Character?

Answer 50

(from Latin character, mark, distinctive quality, from Greek charassein, to scratch, engrave

Question 51

What does prospon mean?

Answer 51

also translated as “person”). Prosopon literally means “before the gaze” or “before the seeing

Question 52

What is the meaning of the Greek word of peripetia

Answer 52

Greek for “reversal,” a turning (or falling) around again

Question 53

What is the word that comes from Latin root, meaning “to stuff”—the sort of drama “stuffed” between the important parts of a play (i.e. the parts that advance the plot)

Answer 53

Farce

Question 54

What is the The Gk. word for fate? This also meant portion, as in portion of life or, originally, a portion of land—that is, a lot, as in “one’s lot in life,” but also as in “drawing lots” or “the lottery” Klotho—spinner. Lakhesis—apportioner. Atropos—”She who cannot be turned.” * The fortune or misfortune of a person’s life is beyond control—determined from above * A character’s fortune is determined by the plot, which cannot be turned.

Answer 54

Moira

Question 55

Play Old English pleg(i)an ‘to exercise,’ from plega ‘brisk movement,’ related to Middle Dutch, pleien ‘leap for joy, dance.’ Hence, the word could mean ‘a joyous exercise.’

Question 56

What is the word that comes from Greek root verb luein ‘loosen, dissolve, destroy’ + ana- ‘up, against, back.’ Hence, the word could mean ‘to break up, dissolve’ or ‘to destroy’ or ‘to loosen Up.’

Answer 56

Analyze

Question 57

Root * Gk. radix means ‘root’

Question 58

What Greek root does the word Theater come from?

Answer 58

From ancient Greek root, theasthai, to behold or see * Thus a theater is a seeing place

Question 59

“performance” * Per- is a prefix that intensifies, meaning something like “thoroughly” (see “perfect,” “permanent” “pertain”) * So a performance is something thoroughly Formed.

Question 60

Story * (from Latin, historia, from Greek “inquiry,” from histor, learned, knowing) * Thus, a “story” is a knowing. It’s what someone who knows—a storyteller— tells you

Question 61

Mythos * Mythos is Gk. word for story, but always a story told by one who knows, a myth based upon knowledge * Myth and story both point to a knowing, but in ancient usage w/out that sense of something being merely fanciful * Myth represented a knowing, i.e. what a knowledgeable person will tell you, but in a world dominated by logos, increasingly suspect In Aristotle’s Poetics, the word mythos means plot.

Question 62

Define Erlebnis and Erfahrung

Answer 62

Erfahrung-human experience as known by science, can be demonstrated, objective , Erlebnis means human experience as it is known through lived experience, subjective

Question 63

“Act” what is the root of act? (has an inital root in Latin that was derived from something else) 2 roots

Answer 63

from Latin actus, action, doing from Latin agere, to drive, do,

Question 64

“Agent”—one who acts or does.

Question 65

“Agency”—”the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power”

Question 66

Objective—a way of understanding action in a drama through intention; sometimes the word “objective” is used as a synonym for action. “What is your objective?” = “What is your action?” As such, it typically carries the association of goal or aim. These connotations are not irrelevant. Compare telos. But this word was originally a translation of a Russian word that more precisely means “task,” i.e. something to be done—that is what you need to do—what is motivating you. That connotation is also important

Question 67

ACTION Aristotle begins his famous definition of tragedy as follows: “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude...” What he means by imitation (mimesis) and action (pragmatos) has been the subject of centuries of speculation, but both words are indispensable to the way we think about drama—as some kind of representation (mimesis, from whch we get such words as “mimetic” and “mime”) and as something that exists in the form of action (praxis, from which we get such words as “practical,” “pragmatic,” etc.). Aristotle’s definition of tragedy emphasizes that it is “in the form of action, not narrative,” a crucial distinction. Aristotle uses the singular form of the word for action—pragmatos not pragmatoi. So a tragedy (a play) is an imitation of action or an action, and we understood that he means not the usual actions that occupy most human experience but some special action, some doing that stands out. What action do you bring into your special space, your theater? You bring your special action, your drama.

Question 68

What is the greek word for actor?

Answer 68

HYPOKRITES- The sense was an “answerer.” - The earliest forms of drama had the chorus (a sort of jury), led by a leader (a sort of judge—krites) asking questions of a masked character—“what happened to you?” ”What happened next?” to get the character to unfold—or give testimony to—the story. Thecharacter was thus being interrogated in the context of a procedure that echoed legal procedure—investigation of a crime before a judge—only in this case the crime existed in story (myth) only, but the question of how to understand the story was just as ambiguous in terms of justice as certain difficult cases before a court.

Question 69

Origin of the word critic is in that word for judge, krites, and at the origin of that word is krinein, a verb meaning to separate, to divide. A critic is one who separates out the truly special from the mundane or the inferior—one who discriminates, one who discerns.

Question 70

PROSOPON (Gk. for mask)—“prosopopoeia” is the word for “assuming a character” in poetry— the poetry of putting on a mask. Several ancient depictions of actors show them staring into the face of the mask—an image of learning the character. Some actors even today refer to acting as “putting on my mask.”

Question 71

MASK, fr. Old Italian, maschera, mask; probably comes from the word for the performer of masques (a sort of play), but its ultimate origin might be in the word for “spectre” or “witch,” suggesting some of the pagan associations heaped on theatrical performance by medieval church authorities in Europe)

Question 72

HISTRIONES (L. for actor, from an Etruscan word for actor, but its root might also be the root of the English word “jester”)—the word “histrionic,” meaning “emotionally overstated,” comes from this root and no doubt reflects a perception of the way some actors perform—larger than life

Question 73

MIMUS (L. for actor of mimes, fr. Gk. mimesis imitation), hence the word “mime.” The mimetic arts are the arts of imitation.

Question 74

PLAYER—reminding us that play, with its pleasurable connotations, even, perhaps, its childhood connotations, is an important aspect of what an actor does—struts and frets his/her hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. Much attention to the ephemerality of the actor’s work, its transience. It passes with time.

Question 75

(The word “type” comes from a Greek root meaning what?)

Answer 75

Impression