Theatre Arts: The Actor, The Playwright, and Theater Spaces

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the craft of acting, acting techniques and institutions, playwriting careers and business, and traditional to experimental theatrical spaces.

The Actor's Paradox

The condition wherein an actor simultaneously is themselves and pretends to be someone else; to convincingly portray truth and make the audience believe the onstage falseness, the actor must lie.

Inspirational Actor

An actor who relies on mental and emotional techniques to reach their "center," often utilizing personal memories and experiences to shape the character's onstage movement and vocal delivery.

Technical Actor

An actor who constructs a character from the outside in through the meticulous, conscious physical use of body and voice, deliberately rehearsing inflections, specific postures, and gestures.

The Actor's Instrument

The body and voice of the actor, which undergo rigorous training to maximize endurance against fatigue, responsiveness, adaptability, projection, and control.

Neutral Mask Work

A physical training exercise using expressionless masks that prevents actors from using facial expressions, requiring them to communicate character, thought, and emotion solely through the body.

Script Analysis

The foundational stage of an actor's preparation, consisting of reading the play to understand its overall style, shape, and production demands, followed by identifying specific character traits within dialogue and stage directions.

The Group Theatre

A New York theatrical collective founded in 1931 by Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman, and Cheryl Crawford dedicated to establishing a natural, disciplined American acting technique based on Konstantin Stanislavski's principles.

Konstantin Stanislavski

A Russian actor and director who developed an influential, systematic approach to actor training, psychological preparation, and rehearsal.

Given Circumstances

The set of environmental, social, emotional, and situational conditions surrounding a character as written in the text by the playwright.

Motivation

The underlying psychological need or reason that drives every action a character performs; within the Stanislavski system, all onstage human behavior must be motivated.

Objective

The immediate, concrete goal a character strives to accomplish in a specific scene or dramatic beat.

Super Objective

The overarching, ultimate goal that drives a character across the entire play, functioning as their continuous dramatic "through-line."

Method Acting

An American acting system developed by Lee Strasberg (considered the "Father of Method") that emphasizes psychological identification with a character by drawing upon personal memories and emotions.

Affective Memory

A core technique of Method Acting in which an actor intentionally recalls vivid personal memories and past emotional states to produce genuine feeling during a performance.

Meisner Technique

An acting method developed by Sanford Meisner that eliminates affective memory and focuses on "the reality of doing," training actors to get out of their heads and live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

The Neighborhood Playhouse

The New York theatre studio founded by Sanford Meisner, recognized as the birthplace of the Meisner Technique.

Playwright

A maker of plays (from "wright," meaning craftsperson or builder) who creates dialogue and action that forwards the plot, reveals character, and communicates ideas.

Book-writer

The author who writes the spoken script and dialogue (the "book") for a musical production.

Lyricist

A theatrical writer responsible for composing the words and rhymes sung in musical theatre numbers.

Librettist

A musical theatre creator who writes both the spoken dialogue (the book) and the song lyrics for a musical.

Lynn Nottage

A prominent American dramatist who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Ruined (2009) and Sweat (2017), and received the 2017 American Academy of Arts & Letters Award of Merit Medal.

Newcomer (Playwriting)

A dramatist entering from outside the traditional theatre industry (such as teacher Margaret Edson, who won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Wit) who may disregard traditional norms regarding form, length, style, or subject matter.

Social Insider (Playwriting)

A dramatist who writes from within a specific cultural or social community to address its particular experiences and issues, such as African-American, LGBTQ, or feminist writers.

Charles Gordone

An actor, director, and educator who became the first African American playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize for his play No Place to Be Somebody.

The Pittsburgh Cycle

August Wilson's series of ten plays, each set in a distinct decade of the 20th century to chronicle diverse facets of the African-American experience.

Screenplay

A written script created for film or television, sharing similarities in length, pace, and dialogue with theatrical plays.

Commission Fee

An upfront fee paid by a producing theatre company to contract a playwright to author a new work, frequently disbursed in installments for signing, the first draft, and the final draft.

Royalties

Ongoing production payments to a playwright for the right to present their work, generally paid as a guaranteed per-performance fee or 5–10% of total box office revenue.

Lord Chamberlain's Men

The London playing company in which William Shakespeare served as resident playwright, actor, and part-owner.

Shakespearean Romances

A classification of Shakespeare's later plays combining elements of tragedy and comedy, including Pericles and The Winter's Tale.

Proscenium Stage

A traditional theatre space framed by an architectural proscenium arch, separating the audience (seated in the orchestra and balconies) from the stage action as if viewed through a picture frame.

Thrust Stage

A performance configuration where the playing area extends out into the auditorium with audience seated on three sides, utilizing little scenery and lacking a proscenium arch.

Vomitories (Voms)

Passageways or tunnels cutting beneath the audience seating banks that allow actors to enter and exit thrust or arena stages swiftly.

Arena Stage

A configuration (also called "Theater in the Round") where the audience completely encircles the playing space on all four sides, requiring actors to enter through aisles and shift props openly.

Blackbox Theater

A highly flexible, unadorned room painted completely black (such as Rutgers' Levin Theater) capable of being reconfigured into proscenium, thrust, arena, or alley formats.

Environmental Stage

A non-traditional theatrical space (frequently outdoors, in converted buildings, or cars) where there is no traditional stage boundary and spectators often move through the environment alongside performers.

Alley Stage

A corridor-like theatre layout where the playing space sits in the center with audience members seated directly opposite each other on two sides.

Booth Stage

A temporary, portable staging arrangement featuring a raised platform and an erected backdrop curtain, commonly used for touring educational productions.