Chapter 1
Which of the five characteristics of performance is missing in the following description?
In the world premiere of August Wilson’s Fences, James Earl Jones played Troy at Yale Repertory Theatre in Connecticut. Troy, an African American garbage collector, struggles to come to terms with bias and segregation before Civil Rights. He ultimately has an affair with a neighbor and, when his wife finds out, she tells him he is no longer her husband.
an actor
action
an audience
a space
What is an audience?
How do rituals differ from theatrical performances?
Actors impersonate other beings in rituals.
Theatre is intended to affect the participants in some way.
Theatre is a self-conscious art form.
Rituals may include masks, costumes, dance, or music.
What is theatre is a self-conscious art form?
A character’s overall desire or goal in a play is called a(n) __________.
super objective
epigraph
subtext
motivation
What is super objective?
When blocking on a thrust or arena stage, __________ can create a challenge for a director.
sightlines
acoustics
machinery
flown-in scenery
What are sightlines?
Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project created __________.
The Imaginary Invalid
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Fun Home
The Laramie Project
What is The Laramie Project?
In performance, how do the plan and the action work together?
The plan dictates the action.
The action and plan are actually the same thing.
The plan dictates the actions the audience takes.
The plan organizes the action.
What is the plan organizes the action?
Which of the following demonstrates the importance of liveness in theatre?
Great actor performances are captured and retained forever on artifacts like DVDs.
Actors shift their dialogue to reflect current events.
Audience response impacts the performers, which shapes the performance event.
Audience cheering improves performers’ morale so much that the outcome of the event changes.
What is audience response impacts the performers, which shapes the performance event?
Susan Lori-Parks’s famous use of periods, spaces, blank lines, and repetitions of the word “pause” reflect her shaping of the text’s __________.
rhythm
setting
pentameter
narration
What is rhythm?
Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More is considered site-specific theatre because it __________.
moves and adapts the show to a new location for every performance
configures seats in a black box theatre so that the audience must interact with performers
is based on Macbeth but sets the play in Denmark instead of Scotland
is staged throughout a hotel and requires the audience to move throughout the space
What is is staged throughout a hotel and requires the audience to move throughout the space?
Which of the following would be a good example of a playwright determining how to work with form?
deciding the order of the scenes
deciding the main character’s name
asking “What is the story?”
fixing the ending so that it matches the rest of the information in the play
What is deciding the order of the scenes?
Which of the following might constitute a performance in everyday life?
A dog catches a ball in front of an applauding audience.
A sick man has an emergency appendectomy.
A woman chooses a special dress for a date.
A tree falls in a forest, but no one is there to hear it.
What is a woman chooses a special dress for a date?
Reading plays has become a common practice due, in part, to __________.
an increased interest in play analysis
Aristotle’s guide to reading a play
the invention of the printing press
the ban on public performance in 1565
What is the invention of the printing press?
If a nobleman attended a play during the English Renaissance, he probably sat in __________.
a box
the orchestra
the gallery
the pit
What is a box?
If you walked into a theatre during tech week and heard a loud crash from the grid, what might be an appropriate assumption?
Call a doctor! An actor fainted and fell off the stage.
Nice! The sound designer is trying out a realistic new special effect.
Watch out! The stage manager threw something heavy at a difficult actor.
Heads up! A member of the lighting crew dropped an instrument.
What is heads up! A member of the lighting crew dropped an instrument?
Which of the following is an example of new play development?
a director who has thought of a new production concept for an ancient Greek tragedy
a staged reading at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center
Tennessee Williams revising Cat on a Hot Tin Roof twenty years after its Broadway debut
Sarah Ruhl overhearing a conversation about a maid who refuses to clean
What is a staged reading at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center?
Performance Studies is a field that __________.
studies languages and the abilities of speakers to “perform” native accents
includes the study of all performance
gives feedback to employers about employee job performance and efficiency
uses performance as a lens to understand everyday activities
What is uses performance as a lens to understand everyday activities?
When reading a play text, stage directions are either the playwright’s descriptions or __________.
the publisher’s addition to make the play’s action seem clearer
the stage manager’s record of the original production
a director’s interpretation of what the play should look like
the scenic designer’s descriptions of design elements
What is the stage manager’s record of the original production?
Good critics balance four major types of information, including judgment, description, analysis, and __________.
the dramatic pentad
interpretation
lede
theory
What is interpretation?
What event led to the professionalization of theatre?
the advent of the director
the Great Actor Strike of 1643
the start of church-sponsored theatre
the separation of church and theatre
What is the separation of church and theatre?
What role does copyright play for the professional playwright?
Copyright law has never extended to plays, so playwrights have no protection.
Copyright protects the playwright’s rights and ensures they receive payment for their work.
Copyright guarantees that the play will not change after it is published.
Copyright gives theatres the right to change scripts in any way they want once they have paid royalties.
What is Copyright protects the playwright’s rights and ensures they receive payment for their work?
Which of the following examples demonstrates the idea that “theatre is ephemeral”?
An audience laughs so much that the show is 20 minutes longer one night.
The emotional climax of the performance makes the audience cry.
The lead actress falls in love with the lead actor.
A woman wears a special dress to the theatre to impress her date.
What is An audience laughs so much that the show is 20 minutes longer one night?
A.R. Gurney’s The Dining Room is made up of multiple scenes with different characters, but all taking place in the same dining room. What type of plot structure does this most likely represent?
cause-and-effect
episodic
cyclic
Aristotelian
What is episodic?
Which of the following is a job for a dramaturg?
finding an actor with a specific look
adapting a Medieval play for contemporary audiences
creating preliminary sketches of period costumes
calling local press to reach potential audiences
What is adapting a Medieval play for contemporary audiences?
A good example of a theatre company that operates in a hybrid way would be __________.
a community theatre company that produces both plays and musicals
an Off-Broadway theatre that nurtures some shows for Broadway debuts while producing free outdoor productions for working-class families
a not-for-profit theatre company that always chooses to produce a play that is different from the one it produced previously
a university theatre company that is solely dedicated to the education of its students
What is an Off-Broadway theatre that nurtures some shows for Broadway debuts while producing free outdoor productions for working-class families?
Plays like Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia demonstrate the __________.
breadth and power of a liberal arts education
many ways that theatres are coming together to develop new plays
importance of securing an agent
variety of playwriting approaches
What is breadth and power of a liberal arts education?