Session 11 Flashcards
(21 cards)
Drama
Actors pretend to be a character ,
the audience watches
Drama is inherently physical,
showing > telling
Impersonation
in the present
• focus on the physical
• not telling but showing
• iconic: actor stands in for
character
• relationships between
characters
• relationships between
characters & audience
Multimedia
Drama uses language and non-linguistic channels of
communication
⚬ Acoustic (language, sounds, music …)
⚬ Visual (set, props, lighting, characters’ costumes,
make-up, gestures, facial expressions, position,
posture, movement, …)
• Synchronic presence of multiplicity of signs
⚬ involves all senses
⚬ information-packed
⚬ high audience activity
⚬ illusionistic, immersive
Performativity
Dramatic text is not the performance
• Text as blueprint, score, or recipe
⚬ Theatre studies: actual performance(s)
⚬ English studies: dramatic text(implied performance)
• primary text vs. secondary text
⚬ primary text: what is said by characters
⚬ secondary text: stage directions
• Staging: variable vs. invariable elements
⚬ some elements tend to match the text, others are changed
• Each performance: unique & tied to the present
Collectivity
PRODUCT OF MULTIPLE PEOPLE,
Collectivity of production
⚬ Actors, Director, Costume designer, Scene
designer, Dramaturg etc.
• Collectivity of reception
⚬ Audience as unique collective
⚬ collective reception vs. solitary reading
(influence on experiences)
⚬ Theatre as ‘cybernetic machine’ (feedback
loop) If you get great feedback, you work better, and keep getting better
Absoluteness of Dramatic Texts
no narration/mediation
Immediacy
performance is unmediated
• mostly showing
• unfolds in the here and now
• No narrative guidance (no
explaining, summarising,
commenting, evaluating agent)
• Audience as eyewitnesses, see
story as it unfolds, apparently
pure spontaneity
• Exception: epic drama
(=Brechtian drama) ;chorus in
ancient drama
Internal vs. External Syste of Communication
• Internal SOC: character to character
• External SOC: play total to audience
• Dramatic language simultaneously directed at
internal AND external system of communication
• we need to extract the information
• Related issues:
⚬ –Need to provide info on pre-history via
character‘s statements (exposition)
⚬ –Need to provide info on characters‘ interiority
in the mode of showing (soliloquy)
⚬ –Discrepant awareness (eg. dramatic irony)
Isolated vs. Integrated Exposition
Isolated vs. integrated exposition
⚬ isolated: all info at once
⚬ integrated: inserted into natural dialog, in pieces
Monological vs. Dialogical Exposition
monological exposition
￭ one character talks
￭ by a figure within or outside story level(epic theatre)
⚬ dialogical exposition
￭ two or more characters talk
￭ through protatic figure (exist for the exposition); through
‘confidant(e)’ etc.
⚬ dialogical exposition diminishes the rift between exposition and
action/plot
Protatic Figure
exist for the exposition
Closed Ending
⚬ resolution of all open questions
and conflicts (plot lines)
⚬ ‘poetic justice’- rewards and
punishment
Open Ending
(some)conflicts are unresolved &
(some)questions remain
unanswered (modern plays)
Soliloquy
A character stands alone on stage, talking to herself. ⚬ “To be or not to be…” Provides insight into character‘s mind
⚬ intentions, motives, thoughts, feelings, worldview
etc.
• Self-characterisation
• Connects scenes
• Drives the plot foward
• Exposition
• Empathy
• Expectations & Suspense
Aside
short utterance not addressed to other characters
but heard by/addressed to audience (comedic)
Discrepant Awareness
Uneven distribution of information
⚬ audience knows more/less than character A/all
characters
⚬ character A knows more/less than character
B/all characters
• Essential tool for
⚬ creating interest, empathy, suspense
⚬ driving action forward
⚬ placing audience in privileged/ignorant position
• Dynamic pattern of information distribution
throughout the play
Dramatic Irony
Audience knows more than character: character’s comment has additional meaning which character is unaware of
Tragedy
PRESCRIPTIVE MODEL BASED ON ANCIENT GREECE
high-seriousness questions concerning meaning of life/humanity
(conditio humana)
• happiness to unhappiness (peripeteia=reversal of fortune)
• Tragic inevitability–> no escape
• From ignorance to knowledge (anagnorisis)
• Noble (aristocratic) hero with tragic flaw/fatal mistake (hamartia)
• Audience: catharsis (fear& pity: cleansing effect)
• ‚High‘ genre, elevated style, noble protagonists
⚬ estates-clause: nobles in tragedies, commoners in comedies
• Three unities (unity of action, of place, and of time; i.e., single action
occurring in a single place and within the course of a day)
Comedy
happy ending
• STORY:
⚬ Teleology towards marriage and social cohesion
⚬ Love triangles dissolve into couples
⚬ Intrigues to overcome obstacles (blocking characters get convinced,
defeated)
⚬ Suggests a (good) future for the characters, new/strengthen
relationships
⚬ Poetic justice (virtue is rewarded; vice is punished)
⚬ Female characters/lower classes more prominent and active than in
tragedy
• DISCOURSE:
⚬ Tendency to dialogue
⚬ Humour; puns tend towards fecundity and sexual innuendo
• THEMES & NORMS:
⚬ Victory of younger generation (‚Spring‘) over older generation (‚Winter‘)
⚬ Choices are maintained, events don‘t appear to be predestined (comic
evitability‘ vs tragic inevitability)
Subjective Distortion
Careful: character’s opinion, world view
etc. ≠ overall norm, world view of the
text
• A play‘s underlying
norm/ideology/worldview can only been
understood when every aspect is
considered
5 Analytical Levels
for all genres:
• story
• discourse
• themes
• norms: ideology, world-view, value system,
construction of hierarchies,…
• functions: questions about functions/effects
apply to all levels
