An Introduction to Drama

Definitions:

• Drama – a play written to be performed in a theater (drama as a literary genre)
• Closet Drama – a play meant to be performed in the solitary theater of the reader’s mind
• Play – a performance by actors of a story primarily told in dialogue
• Play – a literary work that mimics or imitates a complete action onstage

The “Elements” of Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy:

• plot or action, the basic principle of drama
• characterization, an almost equally important element
• the thought or theme of the play
• verbal expression or dialogue
• visual adornment or stage decoration and costumes and masks for the actors
• song or music to accompany the performers’ words and movement

The Three Conventional Categories of Drama:

• Tragedy – the story ends unhappily, usually in the death of the main character
• Comedy – the story ends happily, often with a marriage symbolizing the continuation of life and the resolution of the conflict
• Tragicomedy – a mixture of sad and happy events, the story’s resolution can take different forms, but the audience usually experiences the play as a positive statement, an affirmation of life
  • Dark Comedy – the playwright’s sardonic humor offers a frightening glimpse of the futility of life
  • Farce – a short play that depends for its comic effect on exaggerated, improbable situations and slapstick action

The Elements of Drama:

1.  Plot – the structuring of the events in a play (also called the story)

• Exposition –
• Rising Action –
• Complication –
• Climax –
• Turning Point –
• Falling Action –
• Resolution or Denouement –
• Conflict –
• Suspense –

2.  Characterization – the presentation of characters who play either major or minor roles in the action; motivates the action or plot; round vs. flat; static vs. dynamic; protagonist vs. antagonist

3.  Dialogue – the exchange of words between the characters in a play

• Functions: (1) to advance the plot; (2) to establish the setting; and (3) to reveal character
• Monologue – words meant to be spoken by one actor
• Soliloquies – speeches spoken by a character alone on the stage

4.  Staging – the physical spectacle a play presents to the audience in a performance by the actors

• Elements: (1) the stage set; (2) the different props and costumes used by the actors; (3) their movement onstage; and (4) the lighting and sound effects
• “In most productions the director has a vision of the play that he or she communicates to the actors and the set, costume, and light designers.”
• Blocking – the actors’ movement onstage during their delivery of the dialogue
• Stage Business – the actors’ nonverbal gestures

5.  Theme – the underlying meaning of a dramatic work, suggested through the dialogue spoken by the characters as they move through the action of the play

• “Theme must also take into account the overall effect of the different elements of drama, including the way we imagine the play staged in a theater.”
• “Awareness of the genre of a play can also help you to express its theme.”
• Tragedy – “brings us knowledge or enlightenment about the right way of living in the world”
• Pathos – “arouses our feelings of sadness, sympathy, identification, and even fear”
• Dark Comedy or Theater of the Absurd – the characters are presented in absurd situations that reduce the meaning or significance of their lives to zero
• Comedy – usually centers on the complications of love (if the play is a romantic comedy) or human eccentricity (if it is a comedy of manners)
• “Like tragic plays, good comic plays are serious statements about the human situation, allowing us to laugh at ourselves after the initial shock of recognition.”
• Didactic Plays – often teach a lesson about the best way to live or lecture the audience about serious matters
• Realistic Dramas – the characters seem to exhibit free will in regard to their choices for future action; there are usually a mixture of comic and tragic elements

Source: Chapter 18 -- “What is a Play?” -- and Chapter 19 -- “The Elements of Drama: A Playwright’s Means” -- in Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, by Ann Charters and Samuel Charters, Compact 2^nd edition, Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 2001, pp. 981-1004.