Elements
This element can be broken into the sub-categories of status, purpose and attitude.
What is Role?
This is the technical term for imagining there is no audience and that there is simply an invisible wall allowing people to see into the lives of the characters.
What is the fourth wall?
This word refers to the planned and devised movements of actors on stage to bring a script to life.
What is blocking?
A phrase that actors (mostly Australian ones) say to each other before going on stage for luck.
What is "Chookas"?
This is the technical term for the words that actors say out loud from a script.
What is dialogue?
These two words starting with "A" are the most common forms of the element of Focus.
What are Actor and Audience?
When an actor plays more than one role.
What is multiple-characterisation or multi-role.
We use this person's point of view when naming stage directions such as stage left and stage right.
What is the Actor's point of view?
The name for a group or company of actors in a show that incorporate leads, background actors, etc.
What is an ensemble?
Stage directions are written in this tense.
What is present tense?
This element can be broken down into four key forms - task, relationship, surprise and mystery.
What is Tension?
When a symbol is used multiple times in a production to hint at deeper meaning.
What is a motif?
This is the name for the theatre space when the audience sits all the way around the performance.
What is Theatre in the Round?
The term for a lead-in or trigger for an actor to say their line.
What are cues?
The name for a speech performed by a solo actor.
What is a monologue? (Or a soliloquy)
This element refers to the creation of a particular feeling within audience, sometimes using devices like lighting or music to enhance it.
What is mood?
Taking something people know or are comfortable with, and making it uncomfortable or different to subvert an audience's expectations.
What is making the familiar strange?
This term that also means, "limbs that can help a creature fly," refers to the areas at the side of a stage where an actor might stand before entering.
What are Wings?
The term for an actor's research regarding the "who, what, when, where and why" of the character they are playing.
What are the given circumstances?
The word that gets used in a stage direction when the writer wants the actor to pause for a moment before continuing.
What is a beat?
This element can be manipulated to tell stories in a linear or non-linear fashion; and also can refer to the pacing and timing of actions and dialogue on the stage.
What is Time?
Having a character that represents a bigger idea or concept - e.g. a person playing the part of "Sin", or "Everyman".
What is an allegorical character?
This is the technical term for what people sometimes refer to as a "regular stage".
What is a proscenium arch stage?
In realistic acting, the term that is used to refer to an actor's ability to imagine themselves in different circumstances and how they would react if they were in their character's shoes.
What is the "Magic If"?
The world's most famous stage direction, one of only a handful that Shakespeare ever wrote.
What is, "Exit pursued by a bear"