Home Page Comedy Of Manners Modern Drama Mid-Term - Flashcards

Modern Drama Mid-Term – Flashcards

Blake Terry

7 July 2022

question

Closet Drama

answer

- Plays that were written without the intention of having them performed. ie) The Escape or, A Leap for Freedom by: William Wells Brown

question

Make-Believe

answer

The act of making oneself other than oneself for purposes of entertainment, commemoration, communication, or devotion.

question

Thespian

answer

Stems from the name of the 1st Greek playwright, Thespis. He is considered by many to be the world's first actor.

question

"The Language of Tragedy"

answer

Greek tragedy was a highly structured and formalized art form in which dialogue between two individual actors (today's main component of drama) was relatively unimportant. - Euripides attempted to bring this closer to the language actually spoken by the audience

question

Deus ex machina

answer

Latin for "god from a machine" -a crane that could move characters through the air into the space in front of the scene building. - Euripides used this device to introduce gods, who would resolve the plot and mete out punishment at the end of his tragedies.

question

City-states

answer

Greece was not a unified nation but rather a network that consisted of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes, etc. - These places were ruled by kings or by nobles who managed to gain power. - Read page 10 in book for all information.

question

Because the parts played by the actors were chosen by lots in order to avoid favoritism. By requiring the participation of a large number of citizens, democracy fostered a climate of political debate and dialogue, and the broader practice of debating and voting influenced the system. Pg. 10

answer

Why are Athenian theater and Athenian democracy considered to be connected?

question

Time, Place, and Action

answer

Called the "three unities" - According to strictures of what became known as neoclassical theory, must be maintained by playwrights.

question

Plautus and Terence

answer

Greeks who eliminated the chorus and significantly expanded the use of music, thereby turning their comedies into a kind of musical theater.

question

Closet Tragedy

answer

- Designed to be recited at small, private gatherings or to be read in private. - Seneca required that the audience or readers envision it as happening in their "sight."

question

Histriones

answer

The Latin term for Roman actors that were considered theater professionals and were often times slaves.

question

"Moral instructor"

answer

During the Roman times, a playwright was supposed to cater to the audience and serve as ____ ____. Their works should prove useful as well as pleasing.

question

The dramatic unities of time, place, and action dictated that the playwright not strain a spectator's credulity by having events take place over more than one day and in more than one location and that the play be restricted to a single, focused plotline.

answer

What was the belief of the dramatic unities of Early Modern European Theater?

question

James Burbage

answer

Was considered the premiere Shakespeare thespian:

question

Tiring House

answer

a structure located at the rear of the theater that had two balcony levels that could be used for audience seating, music, and scenes requiring actors to perform above stage level. -ie) the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet

question

Groundlings

answer

Those who paid a penny to stand in the yard surrounding the stage during the Elizabethan period.

question

Liberties

answer

Most of London's private theaters were built within city limits on properties known as _____ that were exempt from municipal control.

question

Verbal Description

answer

How were settings established during English Theater? - Stage properties were not used.

question

Master of the Revels

answer

Was granted the power to license the plays and act as government censor:

question

the First Folio

answer

The first compilation of Shakespeare plays published seven years after his death:

question

Tragicomedy

answer

A play that holds serious moments that the playwright insists finding humor in. ie)

question

"Golden Age"

answer

A Spanish period that the dramatic theater achieved a level of excellence that rivaled that of Shakespeare's.

question

Auto Sacramentale

answer

-The most widely produced form of religious drama in 16th and 17th century Spain. - Celebrated the mystery of the Eucharist in stories mixing the human, the supernatural, and the allegorical. - Pg 42-43

question

Corrales

answer

Spanish public theaters constructed within square or rectangular courtyards enclosed on three sides by buildings.

question

Comedia Nueva

answer

- Known as New Drama - Proved to be the most popular and enduring dramatic form written during the Spanish Golden Age. - Mixed High and Low, Tragedy and Comedy

question

Comedias de capa y espada

answer

A sub-genre of the Comedia Nueva known as "cape and sword plays"

question

Lope de Vega

answer

Played the greatest role in the development and success of the Comedia Nueva. - Was a towering figure in Spanish Golden Age drama and one of the most prolific dramatists ever to write for the stage.

question

Proscenium Arch

answer

The Palais Cardinal was the first in France to include this arch:

question

Comedie Francaise

answer

Europe's first national theater

question

Parterre

answer

The main floor of the auditorium in France consisted of a pit for standing spectators with benches along the wall known as?

question

Loges

answer

The side and rear walls of a French auditorium that contained three rows of galleries, the first two of which were divided into boxes known as:

question

Jean Racine

answer

France's greatest tragic dramatist

question

Moliere

answer

French comedy attained a pinnacle of excellence in the later seventeenth century, chiefly through the plays of Jean Baptiste Poquelin. Better known as:

question

New "technology"

answer

To accommodate sliding upstage shutters and side wings that made possible rapid scene changes, trapdoors, and flying machinery, new English theaters were built. These advances are called:

question

Transvestism

answer

Boys who dressed as women:

question

John Dryden

answer

a leading writer of tragic and other drama who defended "the honour of our English writers" against those who overvalued French dramatic models:

question

Tragedy

answer

What type of drama flourished during the time period of Restoration England?

question

The Enlightenment

answer

a philosophical movement centered in France that stressed the authority of reason and universally valid principles in human affairs

question

Theatrical Licensing Act

answer

confirmed the Drury Lane and Covent Garden as London's only licensed theaters and empowered the Lord Chamberlain to approve plays for performance, which passed in 1737

question

David Garrick (1717-1779)

answer

The century's greatest English actor

question

Domestic Tragedy

answer

expanded to include the scenes of ordinary life. Pioneering play in this subgenre was the London Merchant. centered on downfall and moral reclamation of a London apprentice. Comedy modified

question

"a joy too exquisite for laughter"

answer

Sir Richard Steele, speaking of the pioneering play in Domestic Tragedy, "The London Merchant"

question

Sentimental / "tearful' Comedy

answer

popular throughout Europe during the 18th century

question

drama bourgeois

answer

a genre midway between tragedy and comedy, which would take the social and familial problems of the middle class as its subject

question

Classicism

answer

artists respected the boundaries between styles and poetic forms, the Romantics created unusual mixtures and sometimes left their works deliberately in fragments

question

Cromwell (1827)

answer

served as a manifesto of Romanticism

question

Limelights

answer

an early form of spotlight that greatly enhanced designers' ability to create theatrical illusions and effects

question

Melodramatic

answer

these plots involve extraordinary coincidences and hinge on sudden revelations and encounters

question

The Novel

answer

Mid-1800s was a time when _________ experienced an unprecedented rise in status and appeal, and many of the era's most accomplished writers turned their hands to fiction

question

The Well-Made Play

answer

This was not based on spectacle and music but on complicated, intricately constructed plots. Led up to scene a faire

question

Scene a faire

answer

the obligatory scene that "had to be done"

question

Richard Wagner

answer

inaugurated what are today common theatrical methods such as dimming the light in the auditorium and hiding the orchestra to encourage the audience to focus exclusively on the stage

question

Minstrel Show

answer

America's most popular form of theatrical entertainment in the 19th century, was part of the fabric of American racism even as it is established an American, and especially an African-American

question

Modern Drama

answer

Often characterized by a tension, even antagonism, between dramatists and audiences, an antagonism sometimes provoked by the playwrights themselves.

question

Ibsen

answer

-Borrowed the conventions of the well-made play but interrupted its smooth, technically structured plots with lengthy dialogues, set speeches, and other devices that shifted dramatic attention from incidents to social and psychological issues.

question

Naturalism

answer

A movement that originated in France in the 1860s and advocated that literature and art must faithfully present reality, with the writer and artist assuming the position of an objective scientist.

question

Realism

answer

Seeks to depict contemporary life and society directly, unmediated by art's distorting conventions. - Ibsen's play addresses social realities in recognizably contemporary settings.

question

Aestheticism

answer

A movement that advocated the primacy of beauty over values such as social or political utility and was particularly associated with Oscar Wilde.

question

Surrealism

answer

A movement that focused on spontaneous associations, drifting thoughts, and dream images.

question

Theater of Cruelty

answer

Artaud advocated a primal, physical theater inspired not just by ancient rituals but also by the slapstick comedy of the Marx Brothers under this name:

question

Avant-garde

answer

- The movements of the early 20th century were often grouped together under this classification. - it is a political label applied to radical and advanced roups seeking social change.

question

Epic Theater

answer

Relied on a number of techniques meant to interrupt the flow of plot and acting.

question

John Millington Synge

answer

A playwright that wrote in a more colloquial, highly lyrical idiom. His plays undercut romanticized views of the Irish peasantry, proved controversial with the theatergoing Dublin public.

question

Tennessee Williams

answer

The playwright who explored the intersection of the tragic and the everyday in American life, as characters grapple with the economic, social, and personal challenges of their modern world. - His innovative dramaturgy was put to work in plays that captured the aspirations and anxieties of postwar America.

question

Metatheater

answer

A tragedy that was written about tragedy. Focused on the nature of role-playing and the relationship between reality and theatrical illusion. - ie) Luigi Pirandello / Jean Genet "The Maids"

question

Jean Genet

answer

Whose plays create intricate layers of pretense that are never entirely peeled back?

question

WWII

answer

What brought to a close the era of modern drama that began with Ibsen and other groundbreaking figures of the later nineteenth century?

question

Middle Class

answer

What class established itself more firmly as the arbiter of social values after WWII?

question

The Theater of the Absurd

answer

A movement whose dramatic features such as nonlinearity, antirealism, lack of traditional coherence, nonsensical language, metadramatic awareness, and the mixture of tragedy, comedy, and farce in a modern from of tragicomedy defined their plays:

question

the Arts Council of Great Britain

answer

An independent, government funded body that for the first time in Britain provided state subsidies for the arts.

question

off-Broadway

answer

A theater that involved smaller buildings that often were some distance from the main commercial theater district, and because these spaces served smaller audiences they could be used to produce plays that the larger Broadway houses found too risky.

question

off-off-Broadway

answer

Theaters located in coffeehouses, church buildings, various basements, and wherever else space was available and provided opportunities for a generation of younger dramatists with strong anti-establishment leanings and experimental creative interest.

question

Contemporary

answer

Always imprecise and is particularly elusive when applied to today's historical moment.

question

Playwright

answer

"maker of plays"

question

Language

answer

The playwright's principal means for revealing characters and their dramatic world, and the play relies mainly on the spoken word to communicate with its audience.

question

Spoken text, action text, subtext

answer

Three texts that work together in performance: - Pg. 83-84 Look it up.

1 of

Unlock all answers in this set

Unlock answers

question

Closet Drama

answer

- Plays that were written without the intention of having them performed. ie) The Escape or, A Leap for Freedom by: William Wells Brown

question

Make-Believe

answer

The act of making oneself other than oneself for purposes of entertainment, commemoration, communication, or devotion.

question

Thespian

answer

Stems from the name of the 1st Greek playwright, Thespis. He is considered by many to be the world's first actor.

question

"The Language of Tragedy"

answer

question

Deus ex machina

answer

question

City-states

answer

question

answer

Why are Athenian theater and Athenian democracy considered to be connected?

question

Time, Place, and Action

answer

Called the "three unities" - According to strictures of what became known as neoclassical theory, must be maintained by playwrights.

question

Plautus and Terence

answer

Greeks who eliminated the chorus and significantly expanded the use of music, thereby turning their comedies into a kind of musical theater.

question

Closet Tragedy

answer

- Designed to be recited at small, private gatherings or to be read in private. - Seneca required that the audience or readers envision it as happening in their "sight."

question

Histriones

answer

The Latin term for Roman actors that were considered theater professionals and were often times slaves.

question

"Moral instructor"

answer

During the Roman times, a playwright was supposed to cater to the audience and serve as ____ ____. Their works should prove useful as well as pleasing.

question

answer

What was the belief of the dramatic unities of Early Modern European Theater?

question

James Burbage

answer

Was considered the premiere Shakespeare thespian:

question

Tiring House

answer

question

Groundlings

answer

Those who paid a penny to stand in the yard surrounding the stage during the Elizabethan period.

question

Liberties

answer

Most of London's private theaters were built within city limits on properties known as _____ that were exempt from municipal control.

question

Verbal Description

answer

How were settings established during English Theater? - Stage properties were not used.

question

Master of the Revels

answer

Was granted the power to license the plays and act as government censor:

question

the First Folio

answer

The first compilation of Shakespeare plays published seven years after his death:

question

Tragicomedy

answer

A play that holds serious moments that the playwright insists finding humor in. ie)

question

"Golden Age"

answer

A Spanish period that the dramatic theater achieved a level of excellence that rivaled that of Shakespeare's.

question

Auto Sacramentale

answer

question

Corrales

answer

Spanish public theaters constructed within square or rectangular courtyards enclosed on three sides by buildings.

question

Comedia Nueva

answer

- Known as New Drama - Proved to be the most popular and enduring dramatic form written during the Spanish Golden Age. - Mixed High and Low, Tragedy and Comedy

question

Comedias de capa y espada

answer

A sub-genre of the Comedia Nueva known as "cape and sword plays"

question

Lope de Vega

answer

Played the greatest role in the development and success of the Comedia Nueva. - Was a towering figure in Spanish Golden Age drama and one of the most prolific dramatists ever to write for the stage.

question

Proscenium Arch

answer

The Palais Cardinal was the first in France to include this arch:

question

Comedie Francaise

answer

Europe's first national theater

question

Parterre

answer

The main floor of the auditorium in France consisted of a pit for standing spectators with benches along the wall known as?

question

Loges

answer

The side and rear walls of a French auditorium that contained three rows of galleries, the first two of which were divided into boxes known as:

question

Jean Racine

answer

France's greatest tragic dramatist

question

Moliere

answer

French comedy attained a pinnacle of excellence in the later seventeenth century, chiefly through the plays of Jean Baptiste Poquelin. Better known as:

question

New "technology"

answer

To accommodate sliding upstage shutters and side wings that made possible rapid scene changes, trapdoors, and flying machinery, new English theaters were built. These advances are called:

question

Transvestism

answer

Boys who dressed as women:

question

John Dryden

answer

a leading writer of tragic and other drama who defended "the honour of our English writers" against those who overvalued French dramatic models:

question

Tragedy

answer

What type of drama flourished during the time period of Restoration England?

question

The Enlightenment

answer

a philosophical movement centered in France that stressed the authority of reason and universally valid principles in human affairs

question

Theatrical Licensing Act

answer

confirmed the Drury Lane and Covent Garden as London's only licensed theaters and empowered the Lord Chamberlain to approve plays for performance, which passed in 1737

question

David Garrick (1717-1779)

answer

The century's greatest English actor

question

Domestic Tragedy

answer

expanded to include the scenes of ordinary life. Pioneering play in this subgenre was the London Merchant. centered on downfall and moral reclamation of a London apprentice. Comedy modified

question

"a joy too exquisite for laughter"

answer

Sir Richard Steele, speaking of the pioneering play in Domestic Tragedy, "The London Merchant"

question

Sentimental / "tearful' Comedy

answer

popular throughout Europe during the 18th century

question

drama bourgeois

answer

a genre midway between tragedy and comedy, which would take the social and familial problems of the middle class as its subject

question

Classicism

answer

artists respected the boundaries between styles and poetic forms, the Romantics created unusual mixtures and sometimes left their works deliberately in fragments

question

Cromwell (1827)

answer

served as a manifesto of Romanticism

question

Limelights

answer

an early form of spotlight that greatly enhanced designers' ability to create theatrical illusions and effects

question

Melodramatic

answer

these plots involve extraordinary coincidences and hinge on sudden revelations and encounters

question

The Novel

answer

Mid-1800s was a time when _________ experienced an unprecedented rise in status and appeal, and many of the era's most accomplished writers turned their hands to fiction

question

The Well-Made Play

answer

This was not based on spectacle and music but on complicated, intricately constructed plots. Led up to scene a faire

question

Scene a faire

answer

the obligatory scene that "had to be done"

question

Richard Wagner

answer

inaugurated what are today common theatrical methods such as dimming the light in the auditorium and hiding the orchestra to encourage the audience to focus exclusively on the stage

question

Minstrel Show

answer

America's most popular form of theatrical entertainment in the 19th century, was part of the fabric of American racism even as it is established an American, and especially an African-American

question

Modern Drama

answer

Often characterized by a tension, even antagonism, between dramatists and audiences, an antagonism sometimes provoked by the playwrights themselves.

question

Ibsen

answer

question

Naturalism

answer

A movement that originated in France in the 1860s and advocated that literature and art must faithfully present reality, with the writer and artist assuming the position of an objective scientist.

question

Realism

answer

Seeks to depict contemporary life and society directly, unmediated by art's distorting conventions. - Ibsen's play addresses social realities in recognizably contemporary settings.

question

Aestheticism

answer

A movement that advocated the primacy of beauty over values such as social or political utility and was particularly associated with Oscar Wilde.

question

Surrealism

answer

A movement that focused on spontaneous associations, drifting thoughts, and dream images.

question

Theater of Cruelty

answer

Artaud advocated a primal, physical theater inspired not just by ancient rituals but also by the slapstick comedy of the Marx Brothers under this name:

question

Avant-garde

answer

- The movements of the early 20th century were often grouped together under this classification. - it is a political label applied to radical and advanced roups seeking social change.

question

Epic Theater

answer

Relied on a number of techniques meant to interrupt the flow of plot and acting.

question

John Millington Synge

answer

A playwright that wrote in a more colloquial, highly lyrical idiom. His plays undercut romanticized views of the Irish peasantry, proved controversial with the theatergoing Dublin public.

question

Tennessee Williams

answer

question

Metatheater

answer

A tragedy that was written about tragedy. Focused on the nature of role-playing and the relationship between reality and theatrical illusion. - ie) Luigi Pirandello / Jean Genet "The Maids"

question

Jean Genet

answer

Whose plays create intricate layers of pretense that are never entirely peeled back?

question

WWII

answer

What brought to a close the era of modern drama that began with Ibsen and other groundbreaking figures of the later nineteenth century?

question

Middle Class

answer

What class established itself more firmly as the arbiter of social values after WWII?

question

The Theater of the Absurd

answer

question

the Arts Council of Great Britain

answer

An independent, government funded body that for the first time in Britain provided state subsidies for the arts.

question

off-Broadway

answer

question

off-off-Broadway

answer

question

Contemporary

answer

Always imprecise and is particularly elusive when applied to today's historical moment.

question

Playwright

answer

"maker of plays"

question

Language

answer

The playwright's principal means for revealing characters and their dramatic world, and the play relies mainly on the spoken word to communicate with its audience.

question

Spoken text, action text, subtext

answer

Three texts that work together in performance: - Pg. 83-84 Look it up.

Modern Drama Mid-Term – Flashcards

Unlock all answers in this set

Haven't found what you were looking for?

Search for samples, answers to your questions and flashcards