Elements of Drama Guided Notes
- The word drama comes from the Greek verb dran, which means “______.” The Doing/______is what makes drama.
- The earliest known plays…
- Were written around the ______century B.C.
- Produced for festivals to honor Dionysus, the god of ______and ______
- Drama…
- ...is a story told in front of an ______.
- The Globe Theater
- Where many of Shakespeare’s plays were performed in ______, England
- Open during ______months
- ______performances only
- Open-Air; O-shaped
- ______by cannonball landing on the roof during a performance
- “______” paid one cent to sand in the pit
- ______paid more for seats in galleries
- ______sat in chairs on the side of the stage
- Dramatic Structure:
- Like the plot of a story, the plot of a play involves characters who face a problem or ______.
- Elements of Drama:
- ______: the author of a play
- ______: the people who perform
- ______: the units of action
- ______: smaller parts of the acts
- Actors:
- During Shakespeare’s time, ______were not allowed to act
- All female roles were played by ______(usually by young boys)
- Dramatic Speech:
- The characters’ speech may take on any of the following forms:
a)______: conversations of characters on stage
b)______: long speech given by one character to the others
c)______: speech by a character alone onstage to himself, herself, or to the audience
d)______: remarks made to the audience or to one character; the other characters onstage do not hear an aside
- Stages Directions:
- Found in brackets [ ]
- Describes ______and how characters ______
- From the viewpoint of the actor looking at the audience:
a)______, Center Stage
b)______, Stage Left
c)______, Stage Right
d)______, Upstage or Read
e)______, Downstage or Front
- There are two [______] types of plays:
- ______and ______
- Tragedy:
- A tragedy is a play that ends ______
- Most classic Greek tragedies deal with serious, universal ______such as…
- Right and wrong
- Justice and ______
- Life and ______
- Tragedies put human limitations against the larger forces of ______
- The protagonist of most classical tragedies is a ______. This hero:
- Is ______and in many ways ______
- Has a ______, a personal failing, that leads to a tragic end
- Comedy:
- A comedy is a play that ends ______. The plot usually centers on a ______conflict.
- Boy ______girl → Boy ______girl → Boy ______girl
- The main characters in a comedy could be anyone
- Comic complications always occur ______the conflict is ______.
- In most cases, the play ends with a ______...or two...or three.
- Language of Shakespeare
- ______is a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called ______. (Using the same meter throughout a play helped actors memorize their lines)
- Shakespeare used ______as his meter
- Iambic Pentameter:
- ______(Iamb) - a pair of syllables containing short/long or unstressed/stressed syllables.
- ______= five
- So Iambic pentameter is a line that contains ____ iambs (10 syllables in an unstressed-- ______pattern).
a)Makes a sound like daDUMdaDUMdaDUMdaDUMdaDUM
- Examples:
a)when _____ do______the ______that ______the ______
b)to ______the ______, and ______the _____zel ______
- Shakespeare - Modern English
- Write one example/quote from the slide down the in the space below: