Drama I

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Drama I
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Drama vs. Prose

• Epic narratives
• Dramatic narratives

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Text and Performance

• A play is a multimedial form designed to be
  staged in a public performance. A play is
  'multimedial' in the sense that it uses both
  auditory and visual media a play's audience has
  to use their eyes as well as their ears (a novel,
  in contrast, is a 'monomedial' form).
• A closet drama is a play that is primarily
  designed to be read. Often these plays are
  identified as 'dramatic poems'.

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Text and Performance

• Absolute drama type of drama that does not
  employ a level of fictional mediation a play
  that makes no use of narrator figures, chorus
  characters, story-internal stage managers, or any
  other 'epic' elements
• Epic drama is one that makes use of 'epic
  devices' such as those listed above, mainly a
  narrator or teller figure. It is 'epic' in the
  sense that, just like in prose fiction, there is
  a visible and/or audible narrator figure whose
  presence creates a distinct level of
  communication complete with addressee, setting,
  and time line.

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Illusionist vs. Non-illusionist Theater

• illusionist theater type of drama that creates
  the illusion of presenting reality through
• impersonating characters, actors identifying with
  their role
• realistic stage settings and costumes
• coherent sequence of actions
• non-illusionist theater type of drama that
  breaks the illusion of presenting reality
  through
• showing characters, creating distance between
  actor and character
• minimalistic settings and costumes
• alienation/defamiliarization effect
  (Verfremdungseffekt, Brecht)
• narrator figure

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Epic Drama

• Narrator
• A mediator situated on an intermediate level of
  fictional communication, typically also the
  prologue speaker or epilogue speaker, ostensibly
  telling, summarizing or commenting on the story
  that is/was enacted in the play.
• Alienation effect
• Bertolt Brecht's term for a wide variety of
  anti-illusionist dramatic techniques.

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Epic Drama

• Meta-Drama
• a drama about drama
• theater exposes its theatricality/construction
• (self-referential)
• explores the notion that life imitates art
  (drama) rather than the other way round
  (Aristotle's assumption).
• often uses a theatrical location as a setting,
  and a rehearsal or a play-within-the-play as part
  of the action

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Texts/Elements in Drama

• primary text direct communication among
  characters speeches of the characters, including
  prologues and epilogues, immediate action
• secondary text all textual elements that do not
  belong to the primary text
• specifically, the play's title, subtitle,
  historical notes, dramatis personae, stage
  directions, speech prefixes etc.
• multimedia elements music, sound effects,
  lighting, stage props, etc.

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Communication in Drama
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Communication in Drama
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Communication in Drama
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Sign System in Theater / Plurimediality
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Basic Technical Terms

• Act
• Scene
• Set
• Props/Properties

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Elements of Primary Text

• Speech
• Monologue / Soliloquy
• Dialogue / Polylogue
• Aside
• Monological aside
• Dialogical aside
• Aside ad spectatores
• Prologue, Epilogue, Report

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Monologue and Soliloquy

• Monologue A long speech in which a character
  talks to him- or herself.
• Often, only one character is on stage during a
  monologue, in which case one also speaks of a
  soliloquy (from Latin solus, 'alone').

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Example Soliloquy from Hamlet

• To be, or not to be, that is the question
• Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
• The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
• Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
• And by opposing end them. To die to sleep,
• No more and by a sleep to say we end
• The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
• That flesh is heir to tis a consummation
• Devoutly to be wishd. To die, to sleep
• To sleep, perchance to dream ay, theres the
  rub
• For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
• When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
• Must give us pause theres the respect
• That makes calamity of so long life.
• Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
• And thus the native hue of resolution
• Is sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought,
• And enterprises of great pitch and moment

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Dialogue

• Dialogue A sequence of conversational 'turns'
  exchanged between two or more speakers or
  'interlocutors'.
• The more specific term duologue is occasionally
  used to refer to a dialogue between exactly two
  speakers.

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Asides

• Asides are spoken away from other characters, and
  a character either speaks aside to himself
  (monological), secretively to another character
  (dialogical) or to the audience (ad spectatores).

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Example Asides

• LUSSURIOSO Behold, behold, my lords!
• The Duke my fathers murdered by a vassal
• That owes this habit and here left disguised.
• Enter DUCHESS and SPURIO.
• DUCHESS My lord and husband!
• FIRST NOBLE Reverend Majesty.
• SECOND NOBLE I have seen these clothes often
  attending on him.
• VINDICE aside That nobleman has been
  ithcountry, for he does not lie.
• SUPERVACUO aside Learn of our mother, lets
  dissemble too.
• I am glad hes vanished so I hope are you.
• AMBITIOSO aside Ay, you may take my word fort.
  
• SPURIO aside Old dad dead?
• I, one of his cast sins, will send the fates
• Most hearty commendations by his own son
• Ill tug in the new stream till strength be done.
  
• HIPPOLITO aside Brother, how happy is our
  vengeance!
• VINDICE aside Why, it hits
• Past the apprehension of indifferent wits. ...

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Example Monological Aside

• King. But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son -
• Hamlet. Aside A little more than kin, and less
  than kind.
• King. How is it that the clouds still hang on
  you?
• (Shakespeare, Hamlet, I.2.65)

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Example Aside ad spectatores

• Now, enter, at head of stairs, SIR THOMAS MORE.
• STEWARD. That's Sir Thomas More.
• MORE The wine please, Matthew?
• STEWARD It's there, Sir Thomas.
• (Bolt, A Man For All Seasons)

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Sources/ Reference

• Chris Baldick. Oxford Concise Dictionary of
  Literary Terms. Oxford and New York Oxford UP,
  2004
• Manfred Pfister. Das Drama Theorie und Analyse.
  10th ed. Munich Fink, 2000.
• Michael Meyer. English and American Literatures.
  Tübingen and Basel A. Francke, 2004.