Playing Spaces &
Stage Directions
Stage Directions
A playing space with audience on three sides.
What is a Thrust playing space?
Everything that creates the visual world onstage. This includes: Actors, Movement and spatial relationships onstage, Scenic Design, Costumes, Lights, Props
What is Spectacle
These are the three actor's tools
What are Voice, Body, and Imagination
Gladys talks to Jacob for several minutes explaining why she loves bees.
What is a Monologue?
A playing space with audience on all four sides
What is a Theatre-in-the-round or Arena playing space?
All of the language used by the characters in the play.
What is diction?
A character leans on a door frame.
What is Architecture?
These are three ways that we warm up our voice during the warm up.
Answers will vary.
After Stella and her boyfriend break up, Stella is alone in her room and wonders aloud if there is anything she could have done differently.
What is a Soliloquy?
Audience sits on one side, facing stage
Proscenium arch frames the stage like a picture frame
Often room for an orchestra pit
Deep stage area
Front of stage, APRON, might extend past proscenium
Easy scene changes & detailed scenery
The series of events that occur in a play as characters take action
What is Plot
A character runs in place for 30 seconds.
What is duration? Tempo? Repetition?
This is the name for a stage that is slanted.
What is a raked stage?
Jack and Luisa say hello to each other as they pass in the street.
What is dialogue?
These are the nine stage areas labeled on a 3x3 grid
Let me see your drawings!
The theme of the story. What lesson can be learned? Why is this story worth telling?
This is a list of all 9 viewpoints!
Tempo, Duration, Kinesthetic Response, Repetition, Spatial Relationship, Shape, Gesture, Architecture, Topography
This is the element of plot structure that comes after the rising action and before the falling action.
What is the climax?
Margaret and James have a debate about which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is the best.
What is Dialogue?
This is how you spell the name of the playing space with audience on only one side
What is PROSCENIUM
In this book, Aristotle lays out 6 key elements of drama.
What is The Poetics?
A character moves back and forth within a small rectangular section of the stage.
What is topography? What is shape?
These are 3 reasons why theatre-makers study viewpoints
Used for training performers, building ensemble, and creating movement onstage
A set of names given to principles of time and space. They help us talk about what we are doing or seeing onstage--a shared language.
A tool that actors can use to develop a scene or build a character
Lila taste's the dinner that her mom cooked and says how delicious it is. Then she turns to the audience and whispers "YUCK!"
What is an Aside?