DramLit Directory @ Theatre with Anatoly

2007 dramlit.vtheatre.net/215 *

Drama:

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THR 215 DramLit

Acting:

ShowCases: 3 Sisters, Mikado, 12th Night, Hamlet, The Importance of Being Earnest, Dangerous Liaisons, Don Juan
prof. Anatoly Antohin Theatre UAF AK 99775 USA (907)474-7751

Drama is a term generally used to refer to a literary form involving parts written for actors to perform. Dramas can be performed in a variety of media: live performance, film, or television. "Closet dramas" are works written in the same form as plays (with dialogue, scenes, and "stage directions"), but meant to be read rather than staged; examples include the plays of Seneca, Manfred by George Gordon Byron, and Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley. [ wikipedia ]

SHOWS: 12th Night

Fall 2003: THR413 * Playscript Analysis Textbook: updates 2004

Summary

2004 case study: The Taming of the Shrew + Oedipus Rex

Questions

Some titles on dramlit pages are recommended, not in your textbook!

Notes

I should start with the three truning points in theatre history (Sophocles, Shakespeare, Chekhov) -- including the revolutions in theatre technology.

Some titles are recommended only; I only wish that you would read more tha required...

wikipedia:

There are many forms of drama. It may be helpful to imagine drama as an umbrella, with all of its subforms underneath it.

Theater is one of these forms. It is the act of drama, a dramatization, if you will. Theater requires an audience that is engaged by the action. This requires the audience to willingly suspend its disbelief (to allow itself to believe that what is happening on stage is real, and to forget about the fact that it is not real).

Drama, it could be said, is a tool that can be used in many different ways; it has a unique ability to allow us to play, allowing us to be another person or in a situation that we would not normally encounter such as, being a general in a war. This is what makes Drama a great way of teaching,learning, and growing as a person.

Drama has a holistic way of teaching people. Whether it be in a play or by partaking in a role-play situation, we learn through interactions with others--this allows participants to not only learn facts as they would from a book or in a classroom, but to enter the world of another person, to be allowed to explore how they feel about this situation or person, whether it be a war-torn town or the wolf in the Three Little Pigs. Every interaction with another character or situation gives a greater understanding of what is happening around us.

In a drama session with primary children on the subject of homelessness, the class was asked to enter its own classroom, but to imagine that it was a back lane where a homeless person lived. The class was given pieces of newspaper and was asked to place the newspaper so as to represent objects, such as a telephone, television, cat, and so forth. Through the drama, the children began to feel the isolation of this character, even though he never existed. The class added to the drama by giving each object a story, thereby creating a background for this person; the children worked together, respecting other ideas and not feeling pressured, the outcome being that they thought more about how hard it must be to live alone. They broadened their own perceptions of the world. This all occurred within the safety of the classroom, the group, and the drama.

Drama has many uses in today's world. It is already used by therapists, and is being introduced more into schools as an alternative to just reading facts from a book.

Dramatic literature THR215 Archive @ CLASSES directory *

* 2005 Question: Theatre with Anatoly: what are your webpages for? Dramaturgue (Don Juan) or Dramaturg? See Theatre Theory and read The Possessed D page!

"2007" pages : web & video [ almost online ]

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Dramatic Literature

2007 : 2005: the texts of plays that can be read, as distinct from being seen and heard in performance.

The term dramatic literature implies a contradiction in that literature originally meant something written and drama meant something performed. Most of the problems, and much of the interest, in the study of dramatic literature stem from this contradiction.

2005 Fall -- THR215 Dramatic Literature :
Part 1. Oedipus
Part 2. Hamlet
Part 3. Chekhov (Cherry Orchsrd) and high modernism
Part 4. Postmodern: Becket
Part 5. Writing (new)
Main script.vtheatre.net & 2005 THR215 * Antiquity I * Modern Times II * High Modern (Realism) III * Postmodern (Absurdism) IV * V *
[ calendar ]
Drama is a Greek word meaning `action', drawn from the Greek verb dran, `to do'. Greek tragedians applied it to the plays they wrote; Euripides is portrayed in the Acharnians of Aristophanes crying out, "Oimoi ta dramata!" (Oh no what's become of my plays).

Miss Julie and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics) by August Strindberg

This edition embraces Strindberg's crucial transition from Naturalism to Modernism, from his two finest achievements as a psychological realist, The Father and Miss Julie, to the three plays in which he redefined the possibilities of European drama following his return to the theatre in 1898, A Dream Play, The Ghost Sonata, and The Dance of Death. Michael Robinson's highly performable translations are based on the authoritative texts of the new edition of Strindberg's collected works in Sweden and include the Preface to Miss Julie, Strindberg's manifesto of theatrical naturalism.

Must Read: Theatre:

The difference between drama and theatre
In the field of theatrical performance and dramatic expression, there is a tendency to use the terms "drama" and "theater" synonomously. The terms are problematic and can be open to confusing usage. Stictly speaking, however, the terms refer to different qualities or aspects of dramatic expression. Note this following quote from Bernie Warren:

Most people tend to equate drama with theater. However, there are subtle but important differences between the two. Theater is a collective art. Theater requires many people � actors, writers, designers, technicians, etc. � all working together in a period of rehearsal and creative exploration towards a common goal. Whatever the benefits experienced by participants along the way, theater is evaluated by how well the performance communicates to its audience. Drama is an individual pursuit undertaken within a social context. Defined by human action and interaction, drama is primarily concerned with what happens to participants while they are engaged in activity. It is an extension of children�s play and, like that play, is often free and spontaneous. Drama has no fixed end product, no right or wrong way of doing. As a result, its effects, unlike theater performances, are often unique and unrepeatable. Above all, dramatic experience is a very human activity� one that reaffirms �I exist. My life has meaning.�

(Bernie Warren with Tim Dunne, Drama Games. Captus Press, 1989, p.2) Drama (or dramatization) could also be a prose or verse composition telling a story which shows life or character through conflict and emotions. It is usually performed by actors and actresses in a theatrical setting, but can also refer to pre-recorded television programs or opera.

In sum, "drama" is a generic term for creative play and imaginative taking on of a role, whereas, theatre "requires" an audience and sometimes the technicalities of performance for an audience.
With theatre we are concerned with individuals, with drama we are concerned with the individuality of the individuals.

Doctor Faustus and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics) Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), a man of extreme passions and a playwright of immense talent, is the most important of Shakespeare's contemporaries. This edition offers his five major plays, which show the radicalism and vitality of his writing in the few years before his violent death.

Writing assignments: 200 words post after reading each play. Midterm (Outline, 1st Draft, Final), Final (and/or the Scene -- the same three stages or rewrites), tests.

NB

Complete Plays, Lenz and Other Writings (Penguin Classics) by Georg Buchner,

Original Language: German

2006: Godot + 2008: R/G are Dead

Next: 3 Sisters

"Dramatic Literature from Sophocles to Beckett and After" TOPICS: drama + comedy + postmodern + time + space + past + present + future + death + sex + self + resurrection +

Don Juan and Other Plays (Oxford World's Classics)

This selection of seven of Moliere's prose plays includes "Precious Provincials," "The Would-be Gentleman," "Don Juan," "The Reluctant Doctor," "Scapin the Schemer," "The Miser," and "George Dandin."

Context * Plot Overview * Characters * Character Analysis * Themes * Scenes * Quotations * Key Facts * Study Questions * Quiz * Further Reading * Notes * The Complete Plays of Sophocles

"The Complete Plays of Sophocles" presents a fundamental tradeoff: the translations of the seven extant plays of Sophocles were done by Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb at the end of the 19th century, which means the translations are rather stilted. But on the other hand you get the seven extant plays of Sophocles in a single standard sized paperback volume. The formalism of Jebb's translations does provide a sense of the inherent dignity of Greek tragedy; besides, editor Moses Hadas has substituted moderate for extreme archaism in vocabulary, syntax, and word order regarding the dialogue (the choral poetry remains essentially intact).
Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, only seven of which have survived intact. If we were left with a similar ratio of the plays of William Shakespeare we would be reducing the Bard down to four plays (go ahead, pick your four favorite Shakespeare plays and then think of what would then be lost). Obviously the big plays here are "Oedipus the King" and "Antigone," which comprise two-thirds of the Theban trilogy along with "Oedipus at Colonus," and Sophocles' version of the murder of Clytemnestra by her son Orestes in "Electra," the only mythological story for which we have tragedies by all three of the Greek tragic playwrights. "Ajax," "Trachinian Women," and "Philoctetes" are lesser plays but have in common the Sophocles ideal of the Greek hero.
The ancients considered Sophocles to be the greatest master of tragedy, although today modern critics show a preference for Euripides. Aristotle cited "Oedipus the King" as the ideal tragedy, and the play remains the perfect choice for explicating the Aristotlean elements of tragedy such as hubris, anagnorisis, harmartia, et al. Consequently, for teaching the basics of Greek tragedy it remains the first and most obvious choice. From a contemporary perspective, it is the development of character in the plays of Sophocles that warrants the most attention, as evidenced by Freud's development of the Oedipus and Electra complexes off of these plays. Contemporary readers are stille enthralled by such protagonists as Oedipus and Antigone, individuals who are doomed by the very qualities that made them heroic. Even in defeat such characters achieve a moral victory of sorts.
There is a corresponding volume containing the complete tragedies of Euripides, which would make for some interesting pedagogical possibilities for classroom study. Hadas also edited a collection of Greek plays that features three from Sophocles in addition to works by Aeschylus and Euripides. I still think there is great value today in the formal study of Greek tragedies and "The Complete Plays of Sophocles" is one way to doing so with some degree of depth.

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