Dramatic
Melodrama
Melodrama
Melodrama uses this to increase tension and enhance the emotional tone, just like musicals today or Greek drama of the past.
What is music?
Before the Revolutionary War, most colonists were considered subjects of this Empire.
What is the British Empire?
This leading lady in a play we peeked into laments that she can no longer kill animals with her bow, it's too cruel, and she has a gentle nature.
Who is Princess Pocahontas?
This was a play that celebrated a man named Sparticus who fought against the Romans who enslaved him. American audiences in the 1830s celebrated his resistance to oppression.
What is "The Gladiator?"
This movement,which started in the 1800s, discouraged drinking, violence, gambling, and anything believed to be immoral.
What is the Temperance Movement?
The hero, the trusty sidekick, and the damsel in distress are all examples of this.
Early Americans saw theatre like this, because they thought the same about the British.
What is wasteful and frivolous?
Pocahontas married this man in real life, but their fictionalized romance in the play "The Indian Princess" makes their relationship appear to be more than it actually was.
Who is John Rolfe?
In a horribly ironic twist, while audiences were celebrating Sparticus' fight for freedom, this man's fight for freedom was was crushed, and he was executed.
Who is Nat Turner?
The Temperance Movement could be seen as a throwback to these early colonial settlers who believed in following the Bible to the word, and that anything but hard work and prayer was wasteful.
Who are the Puritans?
This type of acting was used in Melodrama. It was a style where the actor's movements and voices were over-the-top and they could also sometimes acknowledge the presence of the audience.
What is Presentational Acting?
What is England?
Pocahontas allegedly saved this man's life, although his claims are refuted by tribal historians who say that such an event was not possible because she was too young.
Who is Captain John Smith?
He is an enslaved man in a play based upon a novel of the same name who acts kindly to his master and Eva, the daughter, and was seen as an exemplary slave to the mostly white audience.
Who is Uncle Tom?
In response to the overdramaticness of Melodrama, this style of theatre became popular with with writers and audiences at the end of the 1800s who wanted to be serious about what was happening in the world around them and see real stories put on stage.
What is realism?
The rise in popularity in Melodrama aligned with these two movements, which heavily influenced the topics and types of plays that became popular.
What are nationalism and the temperance movement?
One of the earliest American playwrights to become famous was this guy, who performed illicit theatricals while in college and would later go on to write a play called "The Contrast."
Who is Royall Tyler?
"The Indian Princess" was written by this man, who took the writings of Captain John Smith and embellished upon them to create a melodrama full of action and romance.
Who is J.N. Barker?
In the dramatization of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," this character was changed from a victim of the cruelties of slavery in the book to a sort of comic relief and "saved" character in the play, who is only a victim of her own silly pranks.
Who is Topsy?
This man was the Russian director who came up with a method of acting that we still use in America today that asks us to actually DO something, instead of just pretending.
Who is Stanislavski?
This type of thinking was common in 1800s America due to the fact that the new nation didn't have much of a shared sense of identity, but it is detrimental as it excludes outsiders and is frequently harmful.
What is Nationalism?
This person was used as a character in stories written by playwrights, storytellers, and novelists alike. It gave the U.S. a sense of shared history and mythology.
Who is Pocahontas?
This is what writers like Barker wanted to create through their stories because the United States was a new nation that, unlike European countries that had histories going back hundreds of years, lacked it.
What is a national identity?
She was the abolitionist who wrote the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and she faced backlash from white readers who were upset at the negative portrayal of slavery.
Who was Harriet Beecher Stowe?
This asks an actor to think about what they would do if they were in the same situation.
What is the "Magic If?"