The Nature of Theatre/Audience & Critical Performance
This is a "dynamic in which the audience agrees to accept the fictional world of the play on an imaginative level while knowing it to be untrue."
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
These are the two most common plot structures.
Climatic (linear) and Episodic
Which structures today most resemble Greek theatres?
sports arenas
This is the most popular theatrical form of the Romantic period?
Melodrama
Edward Gordon Craig denied that theatre was a fusion of many arts, instead seeing it as:
a wholly autonomous art, fused by a master artist.
Developing a critical eye for theatre can be viewed as involving which three-step process?
Having the experience of the play, analyzing the experience, and then communicating one's response to another person.
The beginning of a play usually involves _______________: the setting forth of information
about earlier events, the identity and relationship of the characters, and the present situation.
Exposition
Similar to a modern parade float, which device was used to accomplish the processional staging
of the English Wakefield Cycle?
Pageant wagon
Because the plots of melodramas were fairly predictable, variety was achieved through what?
Exotic locals
Max Reinhardt, an Austrian director, achieved a breakthrough in the theatre by:
treating each production as a new challenge that demanded its own unique stylistic solution.
These qualities that help distinguish theatre from the other arts?
Complexity of means, objectivity, immediacy, and lifelikeness
These are the two basic types of dramatic forms.
Tragedy and Comedy
In the medieval period, drama presented in churches or monasteries is called what?
Liturgical drama
The present-day __________, who assumes responsibility for interpreting the script and for
approving and coordinating all of the elements that make up a production, is primarily a product
of the late nineteenth century.
Director
Futurism was influenced by:
a glorification of the speed and energy of the machine age
These are of the three core problems facing the critic?
Understanding, Effectiveness, and Ultimate Worth
According to the first theatre theorist, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, a play is a
presentation of people in _________, which for Aristotle was not only about the behavior of
characters but also their motivations.
Action
What term that we use today for contrived endings came about because of the overuse of gods
to resolve difficult dramatic situations?
Deus ex Machina
This is a device in Melodrama where the good are rewarded and the bad are punished.
Poetic Justice
The Depression brought about unprecedented support in American theatre history, exemplified by:
the government-subsidized Federal Theatre Project.
Theatre draws upon all of these other artforms
Literature, painting, architecture, and sculpture, speech, music, and dance.
A character CANNOT be revealed by:
What the character thinks of other characters but does not say.
At the theatre of Dionysus, what was the thymele?
An altar dedicated to Dionysus
During the Late 19th century, box sets become a popular setting for realistic plays. What is a box set?
A set that fully encloses the acting space on three sides like the wall of a room, but with one side removed.
The concepts of epic theatre and alienation are chiefly associated with:
Bertolt Brecht.