drama jargon

Academic Drama

Plays written and performed in schools and colleges in the Elizabethan age.

Burlesque

A comedy that relies on extreme exaggeration, such as sentimentality instead of realistic emotional expression, or treating a serious subject flippantly or vice versa. Usually satirical

Closet Drama

A play written to be read, or a play that is better when it is read instead of performed. Example: Milton's Samson Agonistes

Domestic Tragedy

Tragic drama about the lives of common people. Example: Arden of Feversham

Drawing Room Comedy

Form of Comedy of Manners dealing with high society, often set indoors. Popular in the 20th century.

Agon

A contest; conflict

Farce

Began as a humorous unscripted addition to a play, usually by a clown-type character. Today, it is understood as drama that is entertaining, with humor dependent on outlandish situations, coarse jokes, mocking, and horseplay. Almost no attention is given to plot or characterization

Interlude

Either a brief drama that would be performed during a break in a play or feast, or it could refer to a play with two actors

Kabuki

Most popular kind of drama in Japan since the mid-17th century; it is a dance and musical theater with elaborate sets; involves a mix of stories, acrobatics, and lavish sets; marked by extreme formalism

Melodrama

Play with a romantic plot, sensationalism, little character development, and heavy appeal to the audience's emotions. Playwrights strategize to keep audience emotions heightened with an array of strong feelings.

Noh plays

"Highly skilled or accomplished"; the most important kind of Japanese drama; combines acting, dancing, music, mime, and poetry. The standard repertoire has 240 plays, all written between 1300 and 1600 for religious ritual. There are five kinds: a play in praise of a god; a play featuring a warrior from Japanese history; a play in which an actor impersonates a women; a play featuring violence and supernatural elements; and a serious play with warlike dancing intended to honor the occasion.

Corpus Christi Plays

Medieval biblical plays performed by traveling troupes who participated in Corpus Christi day.

Morality Plays

Dramatized allegory that emerged in the late 14th century. Abstract ideas such as Guilt and Hope are personified as they struggle for a human characters soul.

Mystery Plays

Medieval plays about biblical history. Developed from liturgical dramas into cyclic plays

Passion Plays

Dramas that portray the life of a god, usually Jesus Christ, especially plays about his last days, crucifixion, and resurrection.

School Plays

During Elizabethan times, plays were written and performed at schools. In the 16th century, a significant trend arose that brought the writing and performance of plays to universities; these were for both entertainment and education

Senecan Tragedy

The nine Latin tragedies written by Seneca and tragedies inspired by them; modeled on Euripides. Characteristics include: five acts; presence of chorus and stock characters; messengers delivering news of lengthy actions; dramatic and shocking themes inspired by classical mythology, including cannibalism, incest, and REVENGE; style marked by hyperbole, aphorisms, and sharp dialogue; introspection and soliloquy without characterization

Theater of the Absurd

Plays stressing the irrational or illogical aspects of life; form is not realistic, and depicts the absurdity of life by unusual and unexpected elements; does not follow a plot line, instead of presenting the audience with a series of images and situations that collectively show the confusion and absurdity people face everyday. The genre emerged in America and Europe in the 50s and 60s; examples include Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950) and Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953); other playwrights include Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov, Edward Albee, Arthur Kopit, and Harold Pinter.

Theater of Cruelty

Form of drama that originated in France in the 1930s by Antonin Artaud. Drama is shocking and meant to insult the senses and communicate the idea that life is cruel; action, movement, and sound dominate; features crime, cruelty, and eroticism. Playwrights: Brook, Blin, and Genet; most significant example is Peter Weiss' The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.

Acts

The main divisions in a play, broken further down into Scenes. Over time, different types of plays have adopted different conventions for their forms. Greek and Roman plays and Elizabethan drama all have 5 acts. However, since the 19th century, plays often have 4, 3, or 2 acts, or even 1 act.

Dramatic structure

The structure of a play: Exposition, Complication, Climax, Falling Action, Catastrophe/Denouement

Inciting Moment/Exciting Force

Event that sets the story into motion, leads to exposition and complication

Exposition

Introduction to the story and characters, sets the tone, gives necessary background

Complication

Rising action; protasis; set in motion by exciting force

Climax

Turning point; epitasis; where the rising action turns to the falling action

Falling Action

Catatasis; emphasis on forces working against the hero, possible suspense, possibly leading to disaster

Catastrophe

The conclusion of a play, though now this term is only applied to the end of a tragedy; wraps up Falling Action, ends conflict, and plays out the results of the Climax

Denouement

The conclusion of a comedy

Prologue

Remarks made directly to the audience to introduce the play

Epilogue

Remarks made directly to the audience to conclude the play

Stock character

A flat, stereotypical character in which they are immediately known from typical characters in fiction.

Clown.

Comic character originally with a marked rustic quality, much like the hick, bumpkin, or yokel. Later, servants who make jokes or circus or rodeo characters whose ineptitude parodies the virtuosity of the central characters, often with outlandish costume and makeup.

Alazon

Braggart or imposter stock character; he thinks himself better than he actually is; easily mocked

Eiron

A trickster or hypocrite stock character; opposite of the Alazon

Bomolochus

Buffon stock character

Agroikos

Ignorant country bumpkin stock character

Miles Gloriosus

Braggart soldier stock character

Apron stage

Part of the stage extending in front of the proscenium arch

Arena stage

Stage surrounded all the way around by the audience, so the actors enter and exit via the aisles; also called "theater in the round"

Backstage

The area behind the stage where actors prepare, props are stored, offices are placed, make-up and hair stations are set up, and so on.

Curtain call

The time after the performance when the audience keeps clapping so the cast will come back out for another bow

Curtain fall

The last line of the play before the curtain falls

Double part

Doubling of roles so one performer plays two or more roles

Stage direction

In the script, where the playwright indicates how the play should be acted, set up, etc. Includes exits and entrances, vocal pitch, expression, stage arrangement, and anything else the playwright feels is important. Some scripts have a great deal of stage direction, while others leave more decision to the producer, director, and actors.

Pantomime

A performance using gestures and body movements without words; a form of dramatic action in which silent motion, gesture, expression, and costume express emotional states or narrative situations.

Understudy

A back-up actor for a major part; ensures that if one of the main performers is unable to perform, the play goes on.

Aside

This is when an actor talks to the audience, but the other characters can not hear it. An aside can reveal emotion or be used for humor.

Monologue

Speech given by a single speaker in a situation where there are (or would be) listeners.

Soliloquy

Speech given by a speaker that is not meant to be heard by any of the other characters, in contrast to a monologue. It reveals the character's thoughts, reasoning, and feelings

Vaudeville

An entertainment consisting of successive performances of unrelated songs, dances, sketches, acrobatics feats, juggling, pantomime, puppet shows, animal acts, and varied stunts

Catharsis

Aristotle's term for pity and fear, he regarded it as the primary objective of tragedy. The process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. Can also mean a "breakthrough" for a character, a moment where something within comes out and achieves resolution.

Bad Quartos

A.W. Pollard's term for certain notable corrupt, garbled, and nearly incoherent early editions of Shakespeare's plays.

Ballad Opera

A sort of burlesque opera that flourished in England for several years following the appearance of John Gay's The Beggars Opera (1728); told its story through songs set to old tunes and appropriated various elements from farce and comedy

Bill

The items making up a theatrical program

Bill-matter

Material such as a nickname, slogan, or epithet used in advertising, especially for performers and athletes.

Boulevard Drama

A term applied to sophisticated comedy and melodrama popular in French theater in the 19th century. In present usage, the term is sometimes applied to brittle, sophisticated comedy aimed at a popular audience

Bourgeois Drama

Drama that treats middle-class subject matter or characters rather than the lives of aristocrats, historical figures, leaders, etc.

Domestic/Bourgeois Tragedy

Tragedy dealing with the domestic life of common people

Braggadocio

A noisy braggart who is actually a coward

Burletta

18th century term for a variety of musical dramatic forms, somewhat like the ballad-opera, the extravaganza, and the pantomime. It was called "a drama in rhyme, entirely musical- a short comic piece consisting of recitative and singing, wholly accompanied, more or less, by the orchestra."

Business

Action as distinct from dialogue

Buskin

A thick-soled boot reaching halfway to the knee worn by Greek tragedians to increase their height; by association, the term has come to mean tragedy

Chorus

A group of dancers and singers who participated in religious festivals and dramatic performances in ancient Greece; came to play the role of making inter-act comments without participating in the action and a sing between acts; in Elizabethan drama, it referred to a single actor who recited the prologue and epilogue and made inter-act comments.

Choral character

A character in a play or novel who stands aside from the action and comments on it or speaks about it as a communal voice; essentially a chorus of one person

Chronicle play

A history play that emphasizes important public issues, usually consisting of a series of short episodes arranged chronologically; very popular in Elizabethan England; loose structure, unity consisting mainly in the events of a single king's reign, large number of characters, featured pageantry and other spectacular events such as battles.

Claque

A group of people hired to applaud a performer

Comedy

A lighter form of drama that aims primarily to amuse; uses wit and humor; in general, comic effect arises from a recognition of some incongruity of speech, action, or character; has a more sustained plot, weightier and subtler dialogue, more lifelike characters, and less boisterous behavior than a farce or burlesque; developed in England from religious morality plays and interludes; many different kinds.

High comedy

Pure or serious comedy—appeals to the intellect and arouses thoughtful laughter by exhibiting the inconsistencies and incongruities of human nature and by displaying the follies of social manners; sentimentality is avoided.

Low comedy

Comedy that lacks seriousness of purpose or subtlety of manner in high comedy and has little intellectual appeal; features include quarreling, noisy singing, boisterousness, fighting, boasting, buffoonery, and drunkenness; in England, appeared first as an incidental expansion of action in religious drama; in morality plays, it is associated with antics of vice and horseplay; can still be made to serve more serious purposes.

Realistic comedy

Any comedy employing the methods of realism but particularly that developed by Jonson, Chapman, Middleton, and other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatist. It deals with city life, is satirical, sometimes cynical, and rest on the observation of life. The comedy of humors was an early form of realistic comedy. Ex: Jonson's The Alchemist and Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One.

Romantic comedy

A comedy in which serious love is the chief concern and source of interest, especially a type of comedy developed in the Elizabethan era by writers such as Robert Greene and Shakespeare; characteristics include out-of-door action, an idealized heroine (who usually masks as a man), love subjected to great difficulties, poetic justice often violated, balancing of characters, easy reconciliation, and happy endings

Comedietta

A short or slight comedy; mostly a 19th century form.

Comedy of Humors

A type of realistic comedy developed in the late 16th century developed by Ben Jonson and George Chapman that derives comic interest largely from the exhibition of characters who conduct is controlled by one or more characteristic (humor); some humor or exaggerated trait of a character gave important figures a definite bias of disposition and supplied the chief motive for their actions; satirical; imitates the classical comedy of Plautus and Terrence

Comedy of Intrigue

A comedy in which the manipulation of action by one or more characters to their own ends if of more importance than the characters themselves are; another name for a comedy of situation

Comedy of Situation

A comedy that focuses on ingenuity of plot rather than on character; plot involves conspiracies or stratagems (intrigue); background is less important than ridiculous or incongruous situations- a heaping of mistakes, close calls, mistaken identity, etc. Also another name for a comedy of intrigue. Examples: Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, Jonson's Epicene

Comedy of Manners

A realistic, satirical comedy that ridicules or comments upon the manners and customs of a certain segment of society. In a stricter sense, it concerns the manners and conventions of an artificial and highly sophisticated society; the stylized fashions and manners of this group dominate the surface and determine the pace and tone; plot less important than atmosphere, dialogue, and satire; appeal is more intellectual than imaginative; satire mainly directed against the follies of typical characters and others who fail to conform to the manners of elegant society; often emphasizes an illicit love duel; characters are more likely to be types or stock characters rather than rounded individuals the term is applied especially to the comedy of the restoration as practice by Congreve and others, and for its revival in the 18th and then the late 19th centuries.

Comedy of Morals

A term applied to comedy that uses ridicule to correct abuses, hence a form of dramatic satire, aimed at the moral state of a people or a special class of people. Author: Moliere

City Comedy

A type of drama flourishing around 1558-1642, mostly in the form of satire set in the London of the day with lowlife characters engaged in various crimes, follies, and misdeeds; typically avoids any hint of romance, patriotism, or the supernatural. Authors include Ben Jonson, John Marston, and Thomas Middleton

Commedia dell'Arte/Masked Comedy

Improvised comedy; a form of Italian low comedy dating from very early times in which actors, who usually performed conventional parts, improvised their dialogue, though a plot or scenario was provided; a "harlequin" interrupted the action sometimes with low buffonery

Court Comedy

Comedy written to be performed at a royal court; characteristics include: artificial plot; little action; mythology; pageantry; elaborate costuming and scenery; music; puns. prose dialogue, eccentric characters, farce, allegory. John Lyly's Endimion and Alexander and Campaspe and Shakespeare's Loves Labor's Lost are examples.

Sentimental Comedy

A type of comedy that features middle-class characters finding happiness and overcome moral trials; 18th century genre that was a reaction to the immorality in Restoration drama; presents life as ideal; virtue always triumphs; used highly sentimental emotions to move spectators

Court comedy

comedy written to be performed at a royal court. Characteristics: artificial plot; little action; mythology; pageantry; elaborate costuming and scenery; music; puns. prose dialogue, eccentric characters, farce, allegory. John Lyly's Endimion and Alexander and Campaspe and Shakespeare's Loves Labor's Lost are examples.

Tragicomedy

A play that bends tragic and comic forms; usually a play that employs a plot suitable to tragedy but ends happily, like a comedy; action seems to be leading to a tragic catastrophe until an unexpected turn of events- often a deus ex machina- brings about a happy denouement. Characteristics include: complex and improbable plot, unnatural situations, characters of high social class, pure and 'gross' love often being contrasted, rapid actionm contrast of deep villainy and exalted virtue, close calls, penitent villain, disguises, surprises, jealousy, treachery, intrigue, and enveloping action of war or rebellion. Examples: Shakespeare's Cymbeline and The Winters Tale, Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, Killgrew's The Prisoner.

Clown

A comic character originally with a marked rustic quality; associated with a certain outlandish style of costume and makeup

Classical tragedy

The tragedy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, tragedies dealing with classical subjects, or modern tragedies modeled on Greek and Roman tragedy and criticism.

Camera eye narration

A kind of storytelling, resembling the "Camera Eye" sections of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. (1936), in which the writing gives the appearance of impression of being thoroughly objective, realistic, and anatomical.

Cinema verite

A method of filmmaking that relies on portable equipment and small camera crews; mostly used in documentaries

Companion piece

A work designed to accompany another.

Hamartia

A fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine

Confidant

A character who takes little part in the action, but is close to the protagonist and receives the confidences and intimate thoughts of the protagonist. Example: Horatio

Minstrel show

A form of vaudeville distinguished by blackface and cruel stereotypes of African Americans. Minstrelsy was popular from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century

Contaminatio

A practice-followed by some Roman comic writers-which involved using material from one play to rewrite another.

Cork opera

Obsolete nickname for a minstrel show, referring to the burnt cork used for blackface

Cothurnus

The buskin, a thick-soled, laced boot worn by actors in Greek tragedy.

Coup de theatre

A surprising and usually unmotivated stroke in a drama that produces a sensational effect; by extension, anything designed solely for effect

Cross-cutting

Repeated movements within a connected sequence from one subject to another; suggests simultaneous or parallel actions

Cue

In performance, a signal, such as a word or sound effect, that it is time for something else to happen; used for entrances, exits, lighting changes, etc.

Curtain

A piece of heavy material that screens the stage from the audience and by being raised or opened and lowered or closed marks the beginning and end of an act or scene.

Curtain raiser

A short play or skit presented before the principal dramatic production; by association, anything preliminary

Cut

In film, a switch from one image to another