A 20th Century theatre movement that seeks to show inner psychological reality through the distortion of scenery, lighting, costuming and acting styles; key playwrights include Strindberg and Wederkind; major influence on design and conceptualisation of silent films such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
Physical rather than intellectual comedy; in Greek drama, Old Comedy is most often characterised as low comedy; low comedy typically features drunkenness, disputes and quarreling, infidelity, vulgarity, coarseness and ribaldry, gossip and character assassination, stock characters and slapstick and trickery.
A deceptively simple telling of a story that contains the key concepts, ideas or values of a dramatic text; often metaphoric or allegorical.
The term was used by Brecht as part of the critical and analytical processing of plot in developing and rehearsing drama.
Articulating the fable of a piece is a useful writing and rehearsal discipline enabling actors and directors to identify and distill the essence of a dramatic text.
A fable is also used in literature to describe a short tale with a moral, a story about supernatural or extraordinary events and people, a legend or myth.
Early Irish-Gaelic culture had no known distinctive drama forms but relied on epic, saga and lyric. It was not until the colonisation of Ireland by English culture and the subsequent struggle for an Irish identity that drama emerged as a driving force.
The establishment of the Irish Literary Theatre movement in 1897 and the translation of Irish heroic legend and peasant tales to the stage through writers such as Lady Gregory, Synge and Yeats proved to be a powerful catalyst to Irish drama and establishment of theatres such as The Abbey. Irish drama has been driven by a need to replace the caricature of the “stage Irish stock character” and a search to find poetic non-realistic theatre that restored primacy of feeling. It served political purposes and has often been the centre of controversy.
Irish drama is dominated by the “sovereignty of words”, the capacity to use language with lyrical and poetic intent to shape and construct meaning, “we can make this country whatever we want to be by saying so”.
In the 20th century, Irish drama could be characterised as realist drama in poetic transformation.
John Milington Synge (1871 - 1909) Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea; Sean O’Casey (1880-1964) The Shadow of the Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars.
Movement in the arts and drama - frequently avant-garde and experimental - that gives equal (or more) weighting of nonverbal codes, conventions and language with traditional verbal language approaches; post modernism is also built on a different dramatic action/audience relationship giving precedence to the interpretations and participation of audiences (as in reader response theories of literature) rather than the interpretation of playwrights, directors and actors.
Postmodernism challenges single interpretations - the concept of a Grand Narrative that provides one point of view or explanation. Meanings are individual and relative to the context of the person making the interpretation; there is no external set of values that determines meaning. As a consequence, Postmodernism is skeptical of institutions and established or hegemonic ways of thinking and acting; agency and personal identity is valued over conformity and power structures are challenged.
When dramatic action holds up side by side different, generally contrasting, ideas or characters; the power of juxtaposition lies in its capacity to allow an audience to draw conclusions, to explore dramatic irony; juxtaposition is frequently more than the sum of the individual parts; juxtaposition uses contrast and dislocation to provoke fresh understanding and dramatic impact.
Form or style of theatre that focuses on the irrational and illogical aspects of human life and interaction to highlight a sense of helplessness and the inadequacy of rationalistic approach. Theatre of the Absurd has been a powerful mid Twentieth Century influence.
While often funny in a serious or unusual way, absurdist drama is not to be confused with other forms of comedy. Nor should the term be used indiscriminately for dramatic material that is confusing, contradictory, or obscure.
System of acting derived from Stanislavski and popularised in the USA by Group Theatre, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, Elia Kazan and Boleslavsky amongst others. There are various interpretations of method acting.
There is a focus on creating life-like realistic performances with actors drawing on their own emotions, memories and experiences. Based on the sense or emotional memory process, method acting focuses on actors fully immersing themselves in their characters in order to sense all of the experiences the character would sense.
Well suited to film and realistic acting, Method Acting has been highly popular and also highly criticised for over indulgent focus on internalised emotion and excess.
A nihilistic art movement, which began during the First World War and thrived in France, Switzerland, Germany and The USA. The movement developed from disgust and despair over the war and was founded on theories of irrationality, anarchy and cynicism as well as a rejection of the cultural standards of art from the past. Dadaist theatre and art is often referred to as anti-art.
The three principles of dramatic structure.
Unity of time: action in drama takes place in “real” or actual elapsed time; in some traditions, unity of time means that dramatic action takes place within 24 hours.
Unity of place: action takes place in one location.
Unity of action: Drama is focused through one plot with no subsidiary plots or subplots.
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