Drama

A drama is a story enacted onstage for a live audience.

A prose or verse composition, especially one telling a serious story, that is intended for representation by actors impersonating the characters and performing the dialogue and action.

Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung throughout; musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs.

What Is Drama?

A literary composition involving conflict, action crisis and atmosphere designed to be acted by players on a stage before an audience.

A composition in prose or verse presenting, in pantomime and dialogue, a narrative involving conflict and usually designed for presentation on a stage. Aristotle called it “imitated human action.”

"When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language."- James Earl Jones

Famous Statements of Authors:

As David Berlo says, theatre is a distinguished vehicle of communication, with a considerable tradition and heritage. Many people would classify the theater as an ‘entertainment’ vehicle. Yet countless examples could be given of plays that were intended to have, and did have, significant effects on an audience, other than entertainment.

Norris Houghton says that drama should participate in the “real” action - that it should express faithfully in the theater the artist's conception of reality.

"No literary form has more historical importance than drama," by Seymour Reiter.

What Is Drama? Origins of Drama

The word drama comes from the Greek verb dran, which means “to do.”

The earliest known plays . . . were written around the fifth

century B.C. produced for festivals to honor

Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility

Trivia In the 6th century BC, when the

tyrant Pisistratus, who then ruled the city, established a series of new public festivals. One of these, the 'City Dionysia', a festival of entertainment held in honor of the god Dionysus, featured competitions in music, singing, dance and poetry. And most remarkable of all the winners was said to be a wandering bard called Thespis.

According to tradition, in 534 or 535 BC, Thespis astounded audiences by leaping on to the back of a wooden cart and reciting poetry as if he was the characters whose lines he was reading. In doing so he became the world's first actor, and it is from him that we get the word thespian.

Like the plot of a story, the plot of a play involves characters who face a problem or conflict.

Climaxpoint of highest tension;

action determines how the conflict will be resolved

Resolutionconflict is resolved;play ends

Complicationstension builds

Expositioncharacters and conflict are introduced

Dramatic Structure

Elements of Drama

Structure/plotConflictThemeSettingCharacterAudience

Sub-elements: Imitation by actors

Dialogue

Scenery

Hand Properties

Costumes

Gestures

Sound Effects

Dramatic Structure

Conflict is a struggle or clash between opposing characters or forces. A conflict may develop . . .

between characters who want different things or the same thing

between a character and his or her circumstances

within a character who is torn by competing desires

A tragedy is a play that ends unhappily.

• Tragedies pit human limitations against the larger forces of destiny.

right and wrong

justice and injustice

life and death

Tragedy

• Most classic Greek tragedies deal with serious, universal themes such as

The protagonist of most classical tragedies is a tragic hero. This hero

• is noble and in many ways admirable

• has a tragic flaw, a personal failing that leads to a tragic end

rebelliousness

jealousy

pride

Tragedy

A comedy is a play that ends happily. The plot usually centers on a romantic conflict.

boy meets girl boy loses girl boy wins girl

Comedy

The main characters in a comedy could be anyone:

nobility servantstownspeople

Comedy

• Comic complications always occur before the conflict is resolved.

• In most cases, the play ends with a wedding.

Comedy

Modern Comedy

Modern ComediesIn modern comedies, the genders in this romantic

plot pattern sometimes are reversed.

A modern play

• usually is about ordinary people

• may be tragedy, comedy, or a mixture of the two

• usually focuses on personal issues

Modern Drama

Modern playwrights often experiment with unconventional plot structures.

Modern Drama

long flashbacksmusic

visual projections of a character’s

private thoughts

When you read a play, remember that it is meant to be performed for an audience.

Stage Directions

Playwright describes setting and characters’ actions and manner.

[Wyona is sitting on the couch. She sees Paul and jumps to her feet.]Wyona. [Angrily.] What do you want?

Performance of a Play

Performance Theater artists bring the

playwright’s vision to life on the stage.

The audience responds to the play and shares the experience.

Performance of a Play

Theater artists include Actors

Directors

Lighting technicians

Stage crew

Stages can have many different sizes and layouts.

“Thrust” stage

Setting the Stage

• The stage extends into the viewing area.

• The audience surrounds the stage on three sides.

“In the round” stage is surrounded by an audience on all sides.

Setting the Stage

Proscenium stage

Setting the Stage

• The playing area extends behind an opening called a “proscenium arch.”

• The audience sits on one side looking into the action.

upstage

downstage

stage leftstage right

Setting the Stage

Stages in Shakespeare’s time were thrust stages.

Scene design transforms a bare stage into the world of the play. Scene design consists of

• props

• sets

• costumes

• lighting

Setting the Stage

A stage’s set might be

realistic and detailed

Setting the Stage

abstract and minimal

A lighting director skillfully uses light to change the mood and appearance of the set.

Setting the Stage

The costume director works with the director to design the actors’ costumes.

• Like sets, costumes can be

detailed minimal

Setting the Stage

Props (short for properties) are items that the characters carry or handle onstage.

• The person in charge of props must make sure that the right props are available to the actors at the right moments.

Setting the Stage

The characters’ speech may take any of the following forms.

Dialogue: conversations of characters onstage

Monologue: long speech given by one character to others

Soliloquy: speech by a character alone onstage to himself or herself or to the audience

Asides: remarks made to the audience or to one character; the other characters onstage do not hear an aside

The Characters

Finally, a play needs an audience to

experience the performance

understand the story

respond to the characters

The Audience

The theater must "make its appeal to the audience rather than to the

individual,”opines Edward A. Wright. Without an audience there is no theater, and the symbolic affinity interplay and

affinity between the two prevail. A bifurcation between them would write

the total failure of drama and the theater. Wright even insists that the theater artist” must never forget that he is the servant of

the crowd.”

The End

Philippine Drama(Dulaang Pilipino)

Topic Overview

The Philippines has an old theater tradition. Ma. Teresa Muñoz, in a comprehensive study of theater in pre-Hispanic Philippines based on anthropological findings, attests to the fact that even if it is difficult to ascertain the theatrical forms of the early Filipinos, much of it being “lost on contact with the new and more aggressive culture,” the early Philippine drama stemmed more from historical sources, since “that theater which had its roots in religion and religious practice was barely at the threshold of the structure that constitutes that art.”

We had drama even many centuries before the Spaniards set foot on Philippine shores in 1521. The many external manifestations of this imitation of action—dance, pantomime, acting, song, chant, recitation—be they performed solely on in combination, were found in the numerous rituals observed by the early Filipinos.

Men assemble now as their forefathers did to discover themselves and feel their pulse as they experience life’s processes, what August Strindberg terms “life’s two poles, life and death, the act of birth and the act of death, the fight for the spouse, for the means of subsistence, for honor, all these struggles—with their battlefields, cries of woe, wounded and dead.”

It is said that Ferdinand Magellan himself was treated to a very rare presentation of a native play “to celebrate the fact that the Filipinos and Spaniards were now brothers.” Father Gaspar de San Agustin also mentioned that the early Filipinos were “especially fond of comedies and farces, and therefore, there is no feast of consequence unless there is a comedy.”

Lucila Hosillos, in her treaties on the motive power for Philippine identity and greatness, states: “Nationalism has helped create the literature of the Filipinos, and in the country’s search for national identity today, literature has assumed significance in the definition of the Filipino personality towards the creation of a national image.”

Well-known Filipino drama director and poet Rolando Tinio expounds in his “Theater and Its Sense of Nationality” . “It is perhaps the theater,” he stresses, “which is the most national of all the arts in the sense that it is the most revelatory of the specific quality of civilization of its audience.”

Three Categories:Mga Katutubong Dula (Ethnic Plays)

The Filipino Ethnic Plays or “Katutubong Dula” are plays based on old Filipino folklore and old traditions. They show the country’s indigenous culture and traditions. The play, Pamanhikan (Courtship), for example, focuses on the courtship rituals in the pre-colonial times.

Mga Dula sa Panahon ng Kastila (Plays from the Spanish Era). Plays

From the Spanish era have a decided influence from the colonizers. A lot of them revolve around Catholic festivities like Senakulo (Passion of the Christ), Pinetencia (Penitence) and Flores de Mayo (May Procession). Some also portray the strain between the Catholics and the Muslims, like the play Moro-Moro (The Moors).

Dula sa Panahon ng Amerikano (Plays from the American Era) Finally, the American era ushered in the “sarsuwela” or plays

with singing and dancing. The sarsuwelas in this era were mostly used as subversive propaganda and had themes about patriotism and revolution.The most famous of these sarsuwelas are those made by Severino Reyes, also known as “Ama ng Dulang Pilipino” or “Father of Philippine Drama”. His most popular works are: Walang Sugat (Not Wounded, 1902), Paglipas ng Dilim (After the Darkness, 1920) and Bungangang Pating (At the Mercy of the Sharks, 1921).

The age of the zarzuelas is considered the “Golden Age of Philippine Drama,” as many theater authorities have pronounced.

Famous Filipino Authors

Nick Joaquin Wilfrido Ma. Guerero Roland Tinio Jose Rizal Francisco Balagtas Orlando Nadres Alberto Florentino Estrella Alfon

10 Famous Playwrights

"A Midsummer Night'sDream"

by William Shakespeare

"The Miracle Worker"

by William Gibson

"Death of a Salesman"

by Arthur Miller

"The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde

"Antigone"

by Sophocles

"Fences"

by August Wilson

"Noises Off"

by Michael Frayn

"The Good Doctor“

by Neil Simon

"Our Town"

by Thoron Wilder

"Waiting for Godot"

by Samuel Beckett

The End

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