Class Notes Week 6 (10/25-10/29)

This week, we began our unit on DRAMA.

From the "Notes on Drama" worksheet:

• drama is both an auditory and a visual medium
• movement, dialogue, and monologue are the tools with which drama creates plot, character, theme..
• drama has multiple functions; dig through the layers of dialogue to get to the true meaning(s)!
• drama is usually performed to create an illusion of reality (verisimilitude: feeling that what you see on stage is actually happening)
• "Willing suspension of disbelief"
• there are limitations to drama, and sometimes actors and playwrights must make compromises in the fullness of a drama
• "Break the 4th wall"= making a play seem like a reality using deliberately staged or written ways
• A play is meant to be looked at all in one sitting; plays are made to get the audience's attention and keep it
• built around a series of "dramatic questions" that provoke new questions when others are resolved

Some types of drama (still from said sheet):

• Tragedy: ruin of the leading characters; destruction of some noble person through fate (Greeks); death or destruction of some noble person through a flaw in his/her character (Elizabethans); may not involve death but more dismal life (present); tragedy not of the strong and noble, but the weak (modern)
• Comedy: lighter drama; leading characters overcome initial difficulties in their lives; action/dialogue is usually humorous
• Melodrama: blend of serious action of tragedy w/the happy ending of comedy; usually structured with a series of escapades by the protagonist from various threatening circumstances; clearly defined "good" over "evil"
• Tragi-Comedy: serious action w/happy ending; complex, with carefully drawn characters and more thoughtful treatment of serious subj. matter (love, friendship, death...); more likely to have humour than melodrama
• Problem Play: drama of social criticism that discusses social, economic, or political problems
• Farce: when comedy involves ridiculous or hilarious complications w/o regard for human values
• Comedy of Manners: comedy which wittily portrays fashionable life
• Domestic/Bourgeois Drama: serious play that deals with "ordinary" people from everyday life; in the last 150 yrs replaced both classical tragedy and "heroic" drama
• Theater of the Absurd: *see other handout

Perrine Chapters on Drama
Chapter One (The Nature of Drama) :

• drama makes use of plot and characters, develops themes, arouses emotional responses, and may be either literary or commercial in its representation of reality
• written to be performed, not "read"
• presents action A) through actors b) on a stage c) before an audience
• impact is direct, immediate, and heightened by actors' skills
• Plays can use all of an audience's senses
• facial expressions, gesture, speech rhythm, and intonation can influence an audience's interpretation
• Playwrights cannot directly comment on the action or characters; cannot explain the inner workings of the characters' minds
• Soliloquy/Aside: characters are presented as speaking to themselves: "thinking out loud"; with this device, presumed to be telling the truth
• performance on a stage gathers the attention of the spectator (lighted stage, dark theater, no extra noises...)
• difficult to shift scenes rapidly
• setting limits a playwright's ability to make a play more complex
• The experience is communal!
• Central meanings can be grasped in one performance
• few long, narrative passages

Chapter Two (Realistic and Nonrealistic Drama):

• Realistic: drama that attempts, in content and in presentation, to preserve the illusion of actual, everyday life
• Nonrealistic: drama that in content, presentation, or both, departs markedly from fidelity to the outward appearances of life
• Elaborate and realistic stage sets are the exception, not the norm.
• Details such as costuming, stage sets, and makeup are usually at the hands of the producer and not the playwright
• some playwrights reproduce the vulgarities of language to imitate reality; the purpose is not to imitate actual human speech but to give accurate and powerful expression to human thought and emotion
• Dramatic conventions: any dramatic devices which, though they depart from reality, are implicitly accepted by author and audience as a means of representing reality
• Chorus: a group of actors speaking in unison, often in a chant, while going through the steps of an elaborate formalized dance
• The study of drama requires purposeful learning of its conventions, both realistic and nonrealistic.
• in most plays, the "world" it creates is considered self-contained; however, some authors continually remind the audience that this is a play and NOT the real world
• The adjective realistic, as applied to literature, must be regarded as a descriptive, not an evaluative, term

Other terms to know:

Romantic (Comedy): a type of comedy whose likable and sensible main characters are placed in difficulties from which they are rescued at the end of the play, either attaining their ends or having their good fortunes restored
Protagonist: central character in a story or play
Antagonist: any force in a story or play that is in conflict with the protagonist. An antagonist may be another person, an aspect of the physical or social environment, or a destructive element in the protagonist's own nature
Foil Characters: a minor character whose situation or actions parallel those of a major character, and thus by contrast sets off or illuminates the major character; most often the contrast is complimentary to the major character
Suspense: that quality in a story or play that makes the reader eager to discover what happens next and how it will end
Theme: the central idea or unifying generalization implied or stated by a literary work
Didactic Writing: poetry, fiction, or drama having as a primary purpose to teach or preach
Dramatic Exposition: the presentation through dialogue of info about events tat occurred before the action of a play, or that occur offstage or between the stage actions' this may also refer to the presentation of info about individual characters' backgrounds or the general situation (political, historical, etc.) in which the action takes place.

We've been reading Oedipus Rex in class. *See sticky-note annotations

We also discussed Plagiarism in class.
"Don't plagiarize. It is BAD."
~Ms. Holmes
Yeah...there really isn't much else to say about that. :)