İDE 160 Poetry and Drama

Analysis

Introduction to Drama
Dr. Emine ŞENTÜRK
Drama
• Drama – a play – is a literary composition or story that is intended to be acted out by actors or
players (usually) on a stage.
• Drama was present in ancient Greek Dionysian religious ceremony, but medieval drama was a
new form that was developed from Christian Church ritual in the ninth century.
 • Foreshadowing: Hints at the future that can build anticipation and
tension in the audience.
• Flashback: Descriptions or enactments of past events for the purpose
Dramatic Elements of clarifying the situation, usually as it relates to the conflict.
• Intrigue: A scheme designed by one of the characters, the success of
Some of the elements used by which depends on another character’s innocence or ignorance of the
situation. The usual result is a complication in the plot.
the playwright to create various
effects on the audience are: • In medias res: The first scene opening in the middle of action.
• Suspense: Establishing caring on the part of the viewers for one or
more of the characters, then presenting events that create a sense of
uncertainty concerning what will happen.
• Double Plots: Use of a subplot or second plot line weaving in and out
of the main plot, especially evident in Elizabethan drama.
 • Surprise: After the audience has a sense of expectation, events
happen that are not expected.
• Reversal: When the main character either fails or succeeds, also
called peripety.
• Deus ex machina: Once referring to the Greek practice of physically
lowering a “god” to the stage at the end of the play to solve all the
Dramatic Elements problems, today it refers to a contrived element in the plot used to
resolve a problem.
continued…
• Monologue: When an actor delivers a speech in the presence of other
characters who listen, but do not speak.
• Three unities: Although not adhered to by many playwrights, French
and Italian critics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries believed
that a play needs three unities to achieve verisimilitude (believability):
• Unity of action (first suggested by Aristotle)
• Unity of place (a single location)
• Unity of time (the play portraying no longer than a twenty-four-hour period)
In medias res: The Iliad by Homer

• Homer’s narrative poem The Iliad. Within the first lines, the reader
is dropped directly into the ongoing events of the Trojan War, seeing
the action unfold between the warring Greeks and Trojans. There’s
kidnapping, bribery, plagues, and death, all contained within the
initial first scenes.
The Iliad by Homer

Anger be now your song, immortal one,

Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men--carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another--
the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus' son, and Prince Akhilleus.
 • Dramatic Conventions: The elements of a play that the audience is
willing to accept as real for the sake of the story: actors representing
the characters of the story, the stage set representing a real location in
time and space, suspended time or jumps forward or backward in
time, Italians in Italy speaking English, and other such conventions.
• The aside: When an actor speaks directly to the audience, however,
the rest of the actors on stage supposedly cannot hear him or her.
Dramatic Elements Assumed to be truthful, the aside was used in Renaissance drama to
continued… let the audience know the actor`s inner feelings and in the nineteenth
century to interject elements of comedy or melodrama.
• Soliloquy: A speech delivered by an actor when he or she is alone,
expressing thoughts.
• Scenes: Portions of an act, sometimes triggered by the clearing of the
stage for the next “scene.” Some types of scenes include relief scenes
(widely used in English drama) that allow the audience to relax
briefly in the tension of the drama or to add a sense of poignant
sadness and balcony scenes (e.g. Romeo and Juliet)
Setting

• The setting of a story refers to the time and place of the story and to the socioeconomic
background of the characters. In drama, setting also refers to the means necessary to translate
the story to the audience.
• In the theatre, this translation depends greatly upon illusion – using lights, costumes, props, and
so forth to allow the viewers to suspend reality for a brief time and to accept the story as real.
• There are three different types of stages that vary with location, but the followings are some
examples: Arena stage, thrust stage, proscenium stage
• For more information:
[Link]
-stages-and-auditoria
Proscenium stage
• A proscenium theatre is what we usually think of as a "theatre".
Its primary feature is the Proscenium, a "picture frame" placed around the front of the playing area
of an end stage.
Proscenium Stage
Proscenium Stage

• The frame is the Proscenium; the wings are spaces on either side, extending off-stage. Scenery
can surround the acting area on all sides except side towards audience, who watch the play
through picture frame opening. "Backstage" is any space around the acting area which is out of
sight of the audience.
• Proscenium stages have an architectural frame, known as the proscenium arch, although not
always arched in shape. Their stages are deep and sometimes raked, meaning the stage is
gently sloped rising away from the audience. Sometimes the front of the stage extends past the
proscenium into the auditorium. This is known as an apron or forestage. Theatres containing
proscenium stages are known as proscenium arch theatres and often include an orchestra pit for
live music and a fly tower for the movement of scenery and lighting.
Image showing the
proscenium arch at
Sheffield Lyceum.
Proscenium Stage
The theatre of the Auditorium Building,
Chicago, by Dankmar Adler and Louis
Sullivan (1889), a horseshoe-shaped
theatre with a proscenium stage.
Thrust Stage

As the name suggests, these project or ‘thrust’ into the auditorium with the audience sitting on three
sides. The thrust stage area itself is not always square but may be semi-circular or half a polygon
with any number of sides. Such stages are often used to increase intimacy between actors and the
audience.
Thrust Stage (e.g. Shakespeare’s Globe)
Thrust Stage

• A stage surrounded by audience on three sides. The Fourth side

serves as the background. In a typical modern arrangement: the
stage is often a square or rectangular playing area, usually raised,
surrounded by raked seating. Other shapes are possible;
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was a five-sided thrust stage.
• Thrust (v): ​[transitive, intransitive] to push something/somebody
suddenly or violently in a particular direction; to move quickly and
suddenly in a particular direction (Oxford dictionary)
Image showing the
Thrust Stage at the
Gulbenkian,
University of Kent
Thrust Stage continues…
Arena Stage

The arena stage places the play on an «island» in a sea of viewers. With the physical possibilities of
setting greatly reduced, plays produced on an arena stage depend on a few props, costumes, the
words of the play, and the delivery by the actors.
Also called the «theatre-in-the-round,» the arena stage is the popular choice for the circus and
boxing matches. Historically, the arena was used for some of the earliest harvest-festival dramas and
medieval rounds.
Arena Stage

• An in-the-round stage is positioned at the centre of the audience. This

means that there’s an audience around the whole stage. This type of
stage creates quite an intimate atmosphere, and is good for drama that
needs audience involvement.
• There are walkways for the performers to reach the acting area.
• This kind of staging means that you have to think carefully about the
old adage of not turning your back on the audience. An actor will
sometimes do that for effect but in theatre in the round, part of the
audience is always looking at your back.
• Keeping every member of that audience involved requires some
skilful blocking (working out the movements of each character in
relation to the script).
Arena Stage
Promenade theatre

A theatre without fixed seating in the main part of the auditorium—this allows the standing audience
to intermingle with the performance and to follow the focal point of the action to different parts of
the room. Multiple-focus action and a moving audience are the primary characteristics of the
promenade theatre.
De La Guarda, an Argentine theatrical troupe, soars 40 feet above the audience in this
entertaining combination of circus and performance art. Suspended by cables,
performers swing from the ceiling and occasionally scoop up audience members for a
skyride.
Genre

• One cannot look at the genre of drama played out on English and American stages without first looking at the
history of drama in England - more specifically the Elizabethan popular theatre.
• The early church in England, in celebrating Christmas and Easter, developed special music in which choir groups
would musically «respond» to one another. Sometimes a soloist would «answer» the choral group, or vice versa.
This back-and-forth musical conversation eventually suggested to the early church the concept of dialogue. Soon
costumes and settings were added and people began to «act out» their roles in dramas.
• In a world without television, radio, or computer video games, such performances provided grand entertainment.
Crowds grew in number, spilling out into the churchyards. Eventually, the secular communities became involved,
starting festivals at which dramatic episodes were enacted in cycles of plays. The subjects for these «mystery» or
«miracle» plays were still based on events in the Bible, and production fell into the hands of various trade guilds.
…

• Secular involvement began to be reflected in these productions - at first with

minor changes, like adding comic or tragic scenes that are not in the Bible, but
eventually they became completely secular works. The first formal tragedy
written and enacted in England was Gorboduc, written by Thomas Sackville and
Thomas Norton, in 1561. It carried out the «tragedy of blood» tradition of
Seneca, a first-century stoic philosopher. From this basis, then, evolved the
drama of England and eventually the United States.
• Drama can take two different fundamental forms under which many other genres
fall: tragedy and comedy.
Tragedy
Tragedy

• In a tragedy, the protagonist (the hero or heroine) is overcome in the conflict and meets a tragic
end. The tone is serious and builds in the audience a fatalistic sense of the inevitability of the
outcome and, as a result, is sometimes frightening. Yet the inescapable aspects of the catastrophe
serves as a catharsis that somehow inexplicably purges the viewer of pity and fear. The
significance, then, is not that the protagonist meets with an inevitable catastrophe, but rather the
degree to which he or she deals with the conflict and the tragedy with dignity, courage, and
honour.
The basic components of tragedy

• Mode: narrative
• Protagonist: a tragic hero, honourable, high character and personal conscience
• Catastrophe: the tragic conclusion of the conflict - usually death of the hero or heroine
• Catharsis: the purging of feelings of pity and fear through the vehicle of the play
• Spectacles: grand displays used to grab the attention of the audience
• Reversal: the point when the protagonist’s situation changes from good to bad
• Hamartia: the protagonist’s fatal error or the mistake made (for whatever reason) that leads to his or her
downfall (e.g. hubris - too much self confidence that results in mistakenly not heeding a warning)
• Recognition: simultaneous with the reversal, the protagonist recognises the truth of the situation
Comedy
Comedy
• If the protagonist of a tragedy meets with a tragic end, one would like to simplify matters by
defining comedy as a play in which the protagonist meets with a happy end. Life, however, is not
so simple, and neither is dramatic comedy. Here are a few of the characteristics common to many
forms of dramatic comedy:
Comedy

• Purpose: to amuse the viewer

• Problems facing the protagonist: interesting to viewer, but not threatening
• Subject: generally, a somewhat realistic view of people’s lives, including the disparities between what they should be and
what they are
• Emotional involvement of audience: a balance between two elements:
• A superficial involvement based on relevance to their own lives and on familiarity and
• Detachment arising from less involvement with the fate of the protagonist (as contrasted to the high levels of
emotional involvement of the audience with the fate of the tragic protagonist)
• Intellectual laughter
• Style: friendlier as contrasted to the exalted style of tragic drama
• uses humour: laughter invoked by a good-natured look at the inconsistencies in human nature and of life
• uses wit (in non comedic forms referring to wisdom, but in comedy referring to the bright, intelligent use of words to
invoke laughter
Works Cited
The main sources used in this ppt document are:

Myers-Shaffer, Christina. The Principles of Literature: A Guide for Readers and Writers. Barron’s, 2000.
«What are the types of theatre stages and auditoria?»
[Link]
and-auditoria

and various websites for the visuals