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Historically, theatres have developed in close relationship to

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Sports Activities

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How does a theatrical performance differ from a filmed performance?

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The theatrical performance is live, with the audience and performers, who are aware of each other and mutually interact in their shared presence.

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In the ancient Greek theatre, what physical and symbolic element separated the actors from the audience?

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The actors wore masks.

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One term for a long-standing, collective group of theatre practitioners who have worked together is

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troupe

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The English word for person comes from the Latin word for

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mask

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The word "theatre" comes from the Greek theatron, which means

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seeing place.

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While both theatre and sport are public spectacles, theatre differs from sports activities because

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theatre has a pre-ordained ending.

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Which of the following is NOT a possible meaning of "theatre"?

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a major downtown ticket center

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The responsibilities for admitting, seating, and providing for the general comfort of the audience fall to the

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house manager.

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Theatre is an art because it

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combines emotions, intellect, and aesthetics.

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Theatrical performance differs from other kinds of performance because

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theatre is live, scripted, and rehearsed.

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Which mode of performance acknowledges the audience—as in the case of the nightclub performer who sings, dances, jokes, and responds overtly to applause?

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The presentational mode.

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The minimal requirement for a theatre "building" is

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a place to act and a place to watch.

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The distinctive feature of theatre, which separates it from other arts, is that theatre employs

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impersonation

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The mode of performance in which the audience watches interactions that are staged as if no audience were present at all is called

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the representational mode.

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Since the development of motion pictures, theatre has suffered declining attendance, revenues, and numbers of theatres in America.

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False

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Theatre creates a communal effect on the audience.

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True

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Theatre performances can elicit the audience's participation by arousing in the audience the feeling of empathy.

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True

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Although films are recorded, we perceive them as having a greater immediacy than theatre due to the fact that plays are rehearsed and repeated.

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False

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Adult plays and children's games share the ability to help develop means of coping with life's challenges and uncertainties.

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True

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In Greek tragedy, the central character

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undergoes a change that leads to his or her demise due to a tragic flaw in their character.

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A play's final scene, action, or lines that indicate the end of conflicts, and possibly even bring about resolution, is called the

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denouement.

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The word "drama" comes from the Greek dran, which means

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to do.

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Ultimately, the practice of dividing plays into genre is

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always subjective because each play is unique.

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Why do comedies typically go out-of-date more quickly than tragedies?

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Comedies are more topical and deal with ordinary life at the time they are written.

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Which of the following offers a way that the playwright can present a play's exposition?

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a spoken prologue that directly provides information right before the main action

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The visual aspect of the play, including the scenery, costumes, lighting, make-up, and the over-all look of the stage are included in the element known as

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spectacle

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The unspoken agreements between the audience and the actor, which includes a whole set of traditional understandings surrounding the theatrical event is called

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convention

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The purging or cleansing of the audience's pity and terror at the climax of a tragedy is called

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catharsis

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The play, The Laramie Project can be classified as

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a documentary drama.

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Background information, presented within the play, that the audience must possess in order to understand the action of the play is called

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exposition.

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Which element describes the play's use of rhythm and sounds, either by way of instrumental composition or the orchestration of such noises as muffled drumbeats, gunshots, special effects, and vocal tones?

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orchestra

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Which dramatic genre purports to be serious but, in fact, deals with human issues on only the most superficial level, embellished with spectacular staging, flamboyant dialogue, and highly suspenseful and contrived plotting?

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melodrama

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Which dramatic genre offers a wild, hilarious treatment of a trivial theme, usually based on a stock component like identical twins, switched identities, lovers in closets, and might include full-stage chases, misheard instructions, various disrobings, discoveries, and disappearances?

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farce

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Aristotle's list of 6 components of a tragedy is not really respected or used today.

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False

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Genre means category or kind.

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True

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The audience is not a part of the definition of conventions of the theatre.

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False

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The central character in any type of drama is always called the tragic hero.

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False

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The six components of a play which Aristotle lists, in order of importance, are

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plot, character, theme, diction, music, and spectacle.

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According to Aristotle, it is impossible to break down the elements that make tragedy effective.

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False

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"Blocking" refers to

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stage movements.

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The actor's instrument is his or her

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body and voice, the complete self.

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What is "The Method"?

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an American style of training voice using tapes, constant feedback from a voice coach, and tape-recording the actor's own voice

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What are the two fundamental notions/approaches of acting?

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internal and external

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Directed stage actions that are precisely scripted physical behaviors worked out in blocking are called

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stage business.

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An actor is expected to take care of his body and as such is expected to

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take regular trips to the gym - required of many acting schools.

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The term "subtext" refers to

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a character's unspoken and undescribed goals.

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The type of performing that asks the actor to experience the life of the character being played is

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researching the style of the play and mode of performance.

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In his first published work, Stanislavsky states that the "prime task" of the actors is to "create the

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inner life of the character."

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Most professional auditions consist of performing

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one- or two-minute contrasting monologues from plays.

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A perfect example of the actor's nemesis is

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stage fright.

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The three stages of the actor's routine are audition, rehearsal and performance.

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True

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Great, superior acting must transcend mere technique or training and elevate itself into something much higher.

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True

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Acting can be a highly stressful occupation, often with an unsteady income, fraught with uncertainties, and beset by demands for sacrifice from every direction and yet, can lead to incredibly satisfying and exhilarating experience by being artistically fulfilled.

answer

True

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A linear plot proceeds by

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the point-to-point storytelling of events linked in chronological, cause-effect continuity.

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Which playwright has successfully branched out to TV, writing episodes of Law & Order and Smash?

answer

Theresa Rebeck

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Which New York-born, Louisiana-raised, playwright (b. 1956) wrote a masterpiece of modern drama, Angels in America, that deals with the AIDS crisis, sexuality, gender, and politics?

answer

Tony Kushner

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What aspects of the play do not need to be written at all?

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a character's improvisational behavior

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The term "playwright" refers to

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a person who constructs and composes a play as a wheelwright makes a wheel.

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The playwright works with two fundamental tools:

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dialogue and physical action.

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The core element of every play is

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action.

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Step 1 of a fundamental playwriting exercise is writing down

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imagined conversations between groups of people.

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One difference between the playwright in Shakespeare's time and the contemporary playwright is that

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the playwright no longer functions as a director but is now considered an independent artist.

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A play in which events are connected to each other in strict, chronological, cause-effect continuity, and in which dramatic experience attempts to convey a lifelike progression of experience through time, is classified as

answer

continuous in structure and linear in chronology.

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Which playwright invents new worlds altogether and its own internal logic?

answer

Suzan Lori-Parks

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This playwright speaks of "two selves, the public and private self, the worlds that people juggle a lot of time just from being out there in the world," and whose works, such as Wrecks, reflect this statement.

answer

Neil LaBute

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The playwright's skill at condensing a story that may pans many days or years of chronological time into a theatrical time frame is called

answer

compression.

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A playwright can only probe at the heart of a profound subject with long, complicated scenes of dialogue.

answer

False

The Ancient Greek Theatre: Unifying Physical and Symbolic Elements

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