Theatre and Performance
of the 1700s
of the 1700s
The idea that the audience views a play through an invisible wall and that the audience and performers should not acknowledge each other’s presence is often referred to as this.
What is the fourth wall?
This form of drama rejected neoclassical rules, employed an episodic structure, aimed to create mood and atmosphere, included supernatural elements, and often featured a misunderstood hero who was a social outcast.
What is Romanticism?
This is often considered the most extreme form of realism.
What is naturalism?
This style of art and literature distorts reality to express suppressed emotions. In this kind of drama, protagonists often navigate disconnected incidents, and the structure resembles station dramas. Characters typically are titled instead of named, and dialogue comprises short, abrupt lines with more lyrical passages
What is expressionism?
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire are this type of drama, identifiable by each play’s heightening of certain details of action, scenery, and dialogue while omitting others.
What is selective realism?
This type of performance event is loosely structured, intended to blur the boundaries between art and commonplace experience, and often revolves around interacting with everyday objects. It was most popular during the 1960s, and one of its biggest proponents was Allan Kaprow.
What are happenings?
This practice involves casting roles without considering a performer's ethnicity, gender, age, or physical ability. It is particularly prominent in Shakespearean productions, but it is increasingly being adopted in other forms of theatre.
What is non-traditional casting?
They are considered the first American theatrical family.
Who are the Hallams?
This form of drama, first popularized by the French in the 19th century, was characterized by its focus on surface-level emotions, clearly defined heroes and villains, and the use of stock characters.
What is melodrama?
This playwright was once a theatre critic, condemned the stale commercial theatre of his time, wrote long prefaces discussing issues in his plays as well as stage directions, and was known for his humor. His most notable play was Pygmalion, which was later adapted to the musical My Fair Lady.
Who is George Bernard Shaw?
This was a form of theatre influenced by Filippo Marinetti. It glorified war and machines and consisted of short, illogical pieces that incorporated new electronic media and puppets.
What is futurism?
This type of drama has a fairly conventional form, but the characters exist in an irrational universe.
What is existentialist drama?
This type of theatre refers to productions that are staged specifically in non-theatre locations. Typically, they are picked to help amplify the story of the play or to make a more interesting backdrop for the action.
What is site-specific theatre?
These large-scale theatrical productions are characterized by their tremendous spectacle (i.e., extravagant sets, grand musical scores, and extensive choreography). They often function as franchise operations that several companies can run for years in all the world's major cities.
What are mega musicals?
This was an artistic and literary movement in Germany that rejected dramatic rules and often had radical subject matter and style. Many view it as a precursor to romanticism.
What is Storm and Stress?
This woman instituted major innovations as proprietor of the Olympic Theatre, where she presented light entertainment with a degree of care usually reserved for tragedies and classical plays.
Who is Madame Vestris?
His acting system was designed to make the outward behavior of the performer natural and convincing, to convey the wants and objectives of a character, and to develop a cohesive ensemble.
Who is Konstantin Stanislavski?
Although it only lasted for 10 years, this theatre company is often considered the most influential in American history. They helped to popularize method acting.
What is the Group Theatre?
This type of musical emphasizes style and thematic vignettes over plot.
What is a concept musical?
This influential scenographer was known for their innovations in pillared light, kinetic sets, and multimedia theatre. In many ways, they were the successor of 19th-century designers such as Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig.
Who is Josef Svoboda?
This type of theatre is closely related to international performance festivals. The term refers to the practice of small and experimental companies performing in the same cities hosting these large events, but they are often not part of the official program.
What is fringe theatre?
This influential Italian family (which came to prominence during the 18th century) was known for using the baroque art style, vast scale and elaborate ornamentation, and angle perspective in their scenic designs.
Who are the Bibiena Family?
These two women were the most popular international actresses during the nineteenth century. One was noted for her legendary eccentricities, melodic voice, and broad and flamboyant acting style. The other was known for her more realistic acting, with her believable and understated methods, which supposedly conveyed sincerity.
Who are Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse?
This company was undoubtedly the most influential of the 19th-century independent theaters. It helped popularize Anton Chekhov’s plays and was where Konstantin Stanislavski developed his acting system.
What is the Moscow Art Theatre?
Although he was originally associated with the surrealist movement, this man was kicked out due to his interest in the occult and mysticism. Later he conceptualized Theatre of Cruelty.
Who is Antonin Artaud?
This type of drama often explores the randomness or seeming meaningless of life. The plots in these plays tend to lack a conventional structure and may seem cyclical. There is usually minimal character development and little expository information. Settings are often strange or surreal, and dialogue tends to be sparse
What is theatre of the absurd?
This art form typically involves a live presentation for a select audience, most often in non-traditional theatre venues such as museums and art galleries. It draws on various artistic disciplines, including acting, poetry, music, dance, and painting. It is often called art in process and is meant to be ephemeral. However, it is often documented with still photography and, increasingly, through video recordings.
What is performance art?
This type of theatre utilizes materials like newspaper articles, reports, interviews, and journals to create plays about actual events and people. The original text is typically unaltered during performances, although various dramatic techniques are used to humanize the stories.
This type of performance, which emerged during the 18th century, is characterized by having no sung dialogue but spoken dialogue alternated with songs set to popular contemporary melodies, characters drawn from the middle and lower classes, and satirical humor poking fun at contemporary issues.
What is a ballad opera?
This form of drama features a carefully structured cause-and-effect plot, often centering on a secret the audience knows but the characters do not.
What is the well-made-play?
Modern stage design is considered to begin with these two men. They were known for their symbolic sets and use of structured light.
Who are Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig?
This artistic movement was influenced by Tristan Tzara, railed against traditional “museum” art, tried to confuse and antagonize audiences, and presented pacifist ideologies. A popular form of performance associated with this movement was the sound poem, which consisted of meaningless phonemes rather than words.
What is Dadaism?
This Brazilian playwright, director, and theorist is best known for conceptualizing Theatre of the Oppressed, a type of revolutionary and socially conscious theater.
Who is Augusto Boal?
Jerzy Grotowski helped to popularize the concept of poor theatre, which is the idea that only these two essential elements are required for theatre.
What are the audience and actors?
This is a community-based and participatory type of theatre where people share their experiences with the intent of social transformation. It is often used to promote political activism or inform audiences about important issues, and is most common in emergent nations.
What is theatre for development?
These were any three-act plays with five or more songs per act. In England, imaginative managers would transform non-musical plays, such as those written by Shakespeare, into these to circumvent The Licensing Act.
What are burlettas?
These three nineteenth-century theatre technologies were made possible by the Industrial Revolution.
What are the moving panorama, elevator stage, and revolving stage?
Because producing realistic and naturalistic drama faced legal and commercial barriers, it was often staged by these kinds of companies.
What are independent theatre companies (usually with subscription services)?
This was a German school/movement founded by Walter Gropius, which believed that all arts, including crafts and architecture, should be brought together in a unified fashion
What is the Bauhaus?
This is a type of stylized dance-drama that emerged in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s.
What is Butoh?
This type of theatre does not rely on a traditional script with dialogue written by a playwright. Instead, it features scenarios created by a director or an ensemble.
What is non-text-based theatre?
This type of theatre uses the texts, acting styles, music, costumes, masks, dance, and/or scenic vocabularies of one culture and adapt/modifies them for audiences of another culture across national boundaries rather than within them.
What is intercultural theatre?
These two men are often considered precursors to modern directors. They demanded a more realistic acting style, implemented rigorous and extensive rehearsals, and paid closer attention to design elements.
Who are David Garrick and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
Richard Wagner, who was a celebrated German opera composer, forwarded the concept of gesamtkunstwerk. This term can best translated as this.
What is total theatre?
Many theatergoers and critics were scandalized by realism in theatre for these two reasons.
What is the movement presented taboo topics and contemporary social problems?
This movement was considered the successor of the independent theatres that emerged in late nineteenth-century Europe, influencing the off-Broadway movement post-World War II. The Providence Playhouse and the Washington Square Players were two companies associated with the movement.
What is the “Little Theatre” Movement?
These are the four manifestations of noncommercial theatre in the United States.
What are regional theatre, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and alternative regional theatre?
These are the three most common characteristics of postmodernist theatre.
What are intertextuality, temporal distortion, and subversion of expectations?
This type of theatre distinguishes between performance and drama (i.e., the written text), suggesting that the latter is either of secondary importance or entirely unnecessary. As a result, it often decouples the text from the performance and abandons traditional theatrical conventions, such as actors portraying specific characters. Instead, actors draw attention to the fact that they are performers on stage.
What is post-dramatic theatre?