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Theatre, also spelled theater, in dramatic arts, an art concerned almost exclusively with
live performances in which the action is precisely planned to create a coherent and significant
sense of drama.
Though the word theatre is derived from the Greek theaomai, “to see,” the performance
itself may appeal either to the ear or to the eye, as is suggested by the interchangeability of the
terms spectator (which derives from words meaning “to view”) and audience (which derives
from words meaning “to hear”). Sometimes the appeal is strongly intellectual, as in William
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the intellectual element in itself is no assurance of good theatre. A
good performance of Hamlet, for example, is extremely difficult to achieve, and a poor one is
much less rewarding than a brilliant presentation of a farce. Moreover, a good Hamlet makes
demands on the spectator that may be greater than what that spectator is prepared to put forward,
while the farce may be enjoyed in a condition of comparative relaxation. The full participation of
There is a widespread misconception that the art of theatre can be discussed solely in
terms of the intellectual content of the script. Theatre is not essentially a literary art, though it has
been so taught in some universities and schools. For many years the works of the Greek
dramatists, Shakespeare, and other significant writers such as Friedrich von Schiller were more
likely to be studied than performed in their entirety. The literary side of a theatrical production
works most effectively when it is subordinated to the histrionic. The strongest impact on the
against which those activities take place. Later, on reflection, the spectator may find that the
meaning of the text has made the more enduring impression, but more often the literary merit of
Yet it is often assumed that the theatrical experience can be assimilated by reading the
text of a play. In part, this is a result of the influence of theatrical critics, who, as writers, tend to
have a literary orientation. Their influence is magnified by the fact that it is difficult to make
serious theatre widely available; for each person who sees an important production in a theatre,
thousands of others will know it only through the notices of critics. While reviewers in the
mainstream press may give greater credence to such elements as acting and dancing, critics in the
more serious journals may be more interested in textual and thematic values. Such influences
vary from country to country, of course. In New York City a critic for one newspaper, such as
The New York Times, may determine the fate and historical record of a production, assuring it a
successful run or forcing it to close overnight. In London, however, audiences have notoriously
This is not to say that the contribution of the author to the theatrical experience is
unimportant. The script of a play is the basic element of theatrical performance. In the case of
many masterpieces it is the most important element. But even these dramatic masterpieces
demand the creative cooperation of artists other than the author. The dramatic script, like an
operatic score or the scenario of a ballet, is no more than the raw material from which the
performance is created. The actors, rather than merely reflecting a creation that has already been
fully expressed in the script, give body, voice, and imagination to what was only a shadowy
indication in the text. The text of a play is as vague and incomplete in relation to a fully realized
performance as is a musical score to a concert. The Hamlets of two great actors probably differ
more than two virtuoso renditions of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations possibly can.
In general, the truly memorable theatrical experience is one in which the various elements of
performance are brought into a purposeful harmony. It is a performance in which the text has
revealed its meanings and intentions through skillful acting in an environment designed with the
This article contains a treatment of the art of theatre in the most general terms, an attempt
to illuminate what it is and why it has been regarded as a fundamental human activity throughout
history. An extensive treatment of the elements of theatre can be found in theatrical production.
For the relationship of theatre to music and dance, see theatre music, opera, and dance. For
historical treatment of Western theatre, see Western theatre. The theatrical traditions of other
cultures of the world are considered in articles such as African theatre, East Asian arts, Islamic
arts, South Asian arts, and Southeast Asian arts. For a general survey of dramatic literature and
its tragic and comic forms, see dramatic literature. Dramatic literature is also treated in articles
literature, English literature, French literature, German literature, Russian literature, and so on.
Elements of Theatre
Performer
People onstage presenting characters in dramatic action. The audience is coming to see a
believable as the character they are portraying. If they are not believable, then the audience will
Audience
The essence of theater is the interaction between the performer and audience. Theater
needs to be experienced live. There is a "call and response" atmosphere that can’t be witnessed in
a movie theater.
~ In a live theater experience, when the audience laughs out loud, or cries, then the actors
~ In a movie, there is no connection between the actors and audience, only reactions from the
audience.
Director
The director makes certain that the performers understand the text and deliver the script
excitingly and appropriately. The director also makes sure the blocking, costume designs, set
designs and other aspects of the show blend together to make a production that works together.
All the aspects of theater should complement each other, and the director oversees all these
things.
Theater Space
Another necessary element of theater is the space in which performers or audiences come
together. It is essential to have a stage, or some equivalent area, where actors and actresses can
perform. It is also essential to have a place for audience members to sit or stand.
Design Aspect
Visual Aspect - costumes, lighting, and some form of scenic background
Text
A final element essential to theater is the text that is performed, and it must be present for
theater to occur. Another name for the text is script. One key element for writing is conflict. The
characters should have a goal to reach, but to reach that goal they must go through a series of
In the visual and performing arts, artists employ elements and principles of design to
design are the building blocks, such as line, shape, value, form, space, color, and texture, that the
artist uses to fill in the composition. Principles are the concepts that guide the artists in placing
those elements for their greatest visual impact. These include balance, contrast, movement,
emphasis, pattern, proportion, and unity. In this lesson we will focus on unity and balance.
employing repetition.
Balance is achieved by giving proportionate weight to the right number of elements so that
the viewer has a sense of equilibrium. Balance can be achieved through symmetry when equal
weight is given to each area usually by repeating the same elements in each area,
or asymmetry when elements of varying visual weight are used throughout the piece to balance
Variety is another important factor in achieving unity and balance. Variety provides contrast and
difference that help make the balance and unity dynamic and interesting.
Drama and Elements of Drama
Drama
of the literary genres, which is an imitation of some action. Drama is also a type of a play written
for theater, television, radio, and film. In simple words, a drama is a composition
particularly the ones who perform in front of audience on the stage. The person who writes
Elements of drama
Theme The theme of a play refers to its central idea. It can either be clearly stated
through dialogue or action or can be inferred after watching the entire performance. The theme is
the philosophy that forms the base of the story or a moral lesson that the characters learn. A
theme, in simple terms, is what the play is about. It is the message or lesson that the writers of
the play want the audience to learn. For example, the theme of a play could be about how
unforgiveness destroys relationships or how love can bring people together regardless of their
race or background.
Plot In simple terms, a plot is the chain of events in a play. Essentially, the plot is the
story that the play narrates. It is the sequence of events in the story.
Characters The characters are the roles that actors play in a play. The main characters
of any play are the protagonist and the antagonist. Characters include people, animals, or figures
The contents of the dialogues and the quality of their delivery have a major role to play
in the impact that the play has on the audience. It is through the dialogues between characters
that the story can be understood. Dialogues also help to reveal the personalities of the characters
and help the audience understand characters more. Monologues and soliloquies are also as
important as dialogues are in a play. They are speeches that actors give to themselves or that are
Setting The time and place where a story is set in one of its important parts. The era of
time in which the incidents in the play take place. Stage design and costumes are some of the
Performance This is about how actors give life to the characters that are written on
paper. How well actors portray their characters' personalities determines how well the play will
Music This element includes the use of sounds and rhythm in dialogues. It also includes
music compositions that are used in plays. The background score, songs, and sound effects are
used to complement the scenes and the characters in it. Music also helps to portray the emotions
The visual element of drama, also known as the spectacle, gives a visual appeal to the
stage setup. The costumes and makeup of characters are also parts of visual elements. Visual
Classification of Drama
Comedy
Comedy is a type of drama that aims to make the audience laugh. Its tone is light and it
mostly has a happy ending. The classic conception of comedy came from the Ancient Greek
theatre, where comedy first emerged as a form of drama. Comedy can be further divided into
subcategories, for example, lampoon, farce, satire, black comedy, etc. Each type of comedy has
its audience. Interestingly, such preferences may also depend on the cultural background of
people.
Tragedy
Tragedy is a type of drama in which the protagonist or hero is brought down by
his/her flaws. Murders, deaths, insanity, and pain are among the most common ideas
in tragedies. Main characters usually have some kind of weakness or defect that
causes their downfall. Tragedy first appeared in the theatre of Ancient Greece. Like
comedy, it lived through the Roman Empire, Medieval times, Renaissance, and other
emotions from the audience, to arouse in them sensations of pity and fear, so that they
leave the theatre with an understanding of the ways of gods and men. The audience
catharsis is brought about by witnessing some disastrous and moving change in the
Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a special kind of drama that combines the features of tragedy and
comedy. This means that such play may be sad but will have a happy ending, or it may be
serious with some elements of humor emerging throughout the whole play. Unlike comedy and
tragedy, tragicomedy emerged a bit later, in the times of the Roman Empire. Roman dramatist
Plautus was the first to write a tragicomedy and to use the term. In his play Amphitryon, he used
the lightheartedness of comedy but chose gods and kings as the main characters. This was quite
revolutionary of him. Before Plautus, there were strict rules about writing drama, it was either
comedy or tragedy. These genres were never mixed. Plautus was the first to note that in our daily
Melodrama
Melodrama is the last one of the four types of drama. It is a kind of drama in which
everything is hyperbolized. Usually, themes depicted in melodramas are simple and without any
unpredictable plot twists. There are quite a lot of stereotypes in such dramas. However, the main
point of a melodrama is not to tell a story but to awaken feelings in the audience. Melodramas
are mostly love stories with beautiful heroines, charming heroes, and scary villains. Melodrama
originated much later than comedy, tragedy, and tragicomedy. It first appeared in France at the
end of the 18th century. Later, it reached Britain and became one of the most popular types of
drama in the 19th century. Particularly, the 19th century was the period when melodrama was the
most popular kind of theatre entertainment and was visited by a vast number of people. This is
because, in those times, theatres became available for common people. As melodrama was aimed
at this layer of society, in particular, it became immensely popular among artisans and the
working-class population. The influence of melodrama on society was so great that it lived to our
Type of Drama
Classical Acting
Before talking pictures developed, actors primarily learned and practices their craft on
stage in theatres. Acting for the stage required overly dramatic gestures, exaggerated actions and
slow, drawn out speech to reach the audience in the back of the theatre. With the advent of
talking pictures in the late 1920s, this type of overacting began to lose favor and transformed
itself into what is known as Classical Acting. With its roots in Shakespearean acting, Classical
Acting is action-oriented and strives not to stray from the screenplay dialogue. This stems from
the legal language used for theatrical stage productions which states that the performance must
be as written, or not at all—no ad libbing allowed. Classical actors bring a character to life
through analysis of the writer’s words and the actions required to bring these words to life. Some
famous actors who were trained in Classical Acting include Richard Attenborough, Alan Bates,
Modern Acting
Modern acting techniques stem from Constantin Stanislavski, a Russian actor and
director and guiding force behind the Moscow Art Theatre. In the early 1900s, he began
developing a style of acting that called for actors to inhabit authentic emotions while performing
by drawing upon their own life experiences. Part of this acting process was to encourage actors
to explore their character’s motivations which is where the line “What’s my motive?” began.
This type of acting became known as the Stanislavski method or “Method Acting.” Laurence
Nationalistic Plays
Comedies
London Assurance: Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw star in this new version of
She Stoops to Conquer: Directed by Jamie Lloyd with a cast including Cush Jumbo and
Katherine Kelly
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Sienna Miller stars alongside Jack O’Connell and Colm Meaney
Consent: Nina Raine’s powerful, painful, funny play which sifts the evidence from every
The Deep Blue Sea: Starring Helen McCrory, Time Out described it as ‘Stunning.
Les Blancs: This theatrical search for the soul of post-colonial Africa features Danny
Sapani as Tshembe
A Streetcar Named Desire: Starring Gillian Anderson, Ben Foster and Vanessa Kirby,
The Daily Telegraph called it 'An absolute knock-out. Raw, emotional and deeply
unsettling.’
Yerma: Billie Piper won an Olivier Best Actress award for her performance in Lorca’s
Julius Caesar: Ben Whishaw and Michelle Fairley play Brutus and Cassius, David
King Lear: Starring Sir Derek Jacobi and directed by Tony Award winning Michael
Grandage, The Telegraph said it was ‘The finest and most searching Lear I have ever
seen.’
younger audiences
Othello: Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear jointly won the Evening Standard Best Actor
Award for their performances in the iconic roles of Othello and Iago.
Romeo and Juliet: Bijan Sheibani's thrilling production brings the greatest love story of
production
Jane Eyre: ‘Aflame with passion. A picture of exultant feminism.’ The Observer
Barrie’s classic
Small Island: The Guardian described this adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Orange Prize-
Antigone: Adapted by Don Taylor into a gripping political thriller with a cast including
Dara: Shahid Nadeem’s epic tale of the dispute that shaped modern-day India and
Pakistan
come a long way in the Philippines since it made its arrival during the American Occupation. But
challenges remain, especially the lack of financial wherewithal and support from the state. Then
there’s the seeming paucity in audience.The literary forum “Ang Teatro sa Pilipinas sa Bagong
Milenyo,” organized by the University of Santo Tomas Center for Creative Writing and Literary
Studies, recently featured theater artists Rody Vera, Nicolas B. Pichay, Liza Magtoto and Sir
Anril Tiatco discussing the poor state of Philippine theater.“There is a financial catastrophe that
we feel in theater because we don’t have any funding, we don’t have support from the
Government unless we apply for a grant,” said Magtoto, whose recent works included the hit
musical “Rak of Aegis.” She said professior theater was in its death throes (“naghihikahos”).She
noted that many companies were having a hard time inviting audience to watch their shows
because of the high ticket prices.“Audience building is really difficult,” she said. “The good
thing about this, however, is that many theater companies were conceived. But many theater
companies are having a problem with marketing. Unless it was free of charge, it was difficult to
bring in audience.”
‘Urgency’
Tiatco, who teaches at the Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts in
University of the Philippines Diliman, said that contemporary theater in the Philippines, or at
least in Manila, is rooted in social criticism.Citing critic Doreen G. Fernandez, he noted that with
thematic concerns of the Filipino playwrights, directors and actors, “the vitality of theater is in its
urgency.”“[Filipino playwrights] do not need to hear the strengths in writing techniques in order
to want to write a play in like manner; instead, their themes invade their craft and they reach for
techniques,” he said. “By urgency, Fernandez said theater in the Philippines used to represent
social concerns of the time and therefore provide a commentary on the state of things at that
time.”
Tiatco stressed that contemporary artists behind the staging of current productions “worked on
the same tradition of social activism which might be viewed as a call for resisting certain social
In the same vein, Vera noted the tradition of well-known Filipino playwrights such as Reuel
Aguila, Rene Villanueva, Al Santos, Malou Jacob who wrote because of the “urgency of the
time”.“It was important for them to say what they wanted to say more than how they could say
it,” said Vera, who was inducted this year in the Palanca Awards Hall of Fame. “It was clear to
Musicals
Writer-lawyer Pichay, who wrote “Maxie The Musicale,” noted the rise of musical
theater. “We have a musical culture,” Pichay said. “We are a karaoke nation. We have a
theatrical tradition with moro-moro, zarzuela and vaudeville.” Pichay noted that the Filipino
people’s penchant for musicals came around in the 1980s when the whole world began to notice
then 17-year-old Lea Salonga, who played Kim in the musical “Miss Saigon.”Meanwhile,
Magtoto, who wrote the musical “Care Divas,” noted the rise of theater-goers in the country
because of musical productions, but she said that the theater did not always have to show
musicals.
Gay sensibility
The gay sensibility in musicals has long been a heated discussion in queer theories. But
what is gay sensibility?According to Pichay, it is the way in which the world is viewed through
the eyes of a gay person. However, he said that this was hard to signify because one cannot
actually define this.Pichay was referring to an article written by Anthony Tommasini for the
New York Times in which the latter argued that the notion of “gay sensibility” associated to
musicals came from the fact that the earlier productions were written mostly be gay
people.“Would it help to think that that musicals have actuality that is mostly associated with the
gay culture?” asked Pichay. “Masaya lang talaga ang kumanta and sumayaw, but it doesn’t
Vera, who was one of the co-founder of the 10-year-running Virgin Labfest, said that the
festival sought to reconcile drama and literature, performativity and literary quality. In the ’90s,
playwright Rene Villanueva set up the group called Telon where Pichay, Elmer Gatchalian, Jun
Lana, Tim Dacanay, Luna Sicat-Cleto were members. The group was largely built because of
their belief that “the true test of a play was to be in production.” Then, the late Charley de la Paz
Association (Peta), which was later joined with Telon to form what would be called the Writers’
Bloc, which Vera now heads.Vera said that it was important for them that the drama they write
would be eventually translated on stage.“In film writing, the work must be set to production
before we could say that this was what had become of it. Sometimes what the actors say help to
contribute in enriching the material. Not only the light and ‘literariness’ of the words, but also its
stageability. This is the vision of Virgin Labfest.”Meanwhile, Pichay said that the theater offered
more engagement than did TV shows or films. He stressed that in the age of social media, TV
had created a big divide among the people because it did not build a community, only
consumerism.“In the Greek times, the theater really was a community,” he said. “When you
build a community, you build a theater. The theater should entertain and educate. It should
address a particular audience and make people introspective and let them know their place in
MANILA, PHILIPPINES
Theater artists face a tough season as the pandemic rules out mass gatherings, but as the
nation itself goes through this difficult chapter, Filipino thespians say the art of storytelling will
flourish in adversity On the eve of the lockdown of Metro Manila, Stella Cañete Mendoza
returned to her backstage dressing room to pack the blouses, skirts, dresses, the shirt-and-jeans,
and the headband she had meticulously plotted to help herself get into character. Stella had
arrived early for that final company call. Soon her two-dozen fellow actors trickled in to collect
their costumes and props, too. Stripped of sets and equipment, the bare hall echoed the sounds of
things being put away. The producers, cast, and crew of the musical Dekada ’70 decided to
postpone the final leg of the show’s run just before the government placed the metro under
enhanced community quarantine. Theirs was an intimate show. The Doreen Black Box at the
Ateneo’s Areté arts center seated only 200 people in the audience. It made for immersive,
riveting performances. It’s exactly the thing to avoid during the coronavirus pandemic. How
does one practice social distancing inside a theater? “Wala. You can’t. We in the cast, we
embrace and hold hands a lot in the show. Then of course, the audience sits in front of us, side by
side,” said Stella. She played the lead role of Amanda Bartolome, a doting mother who, by the
end of the play, finds her militant voice. In the weeks before the pandemic took hold, the crew
considered setting the audience chairs farther apart, leaving alcohol dispensers at the entrances,
giving every audience member a face mask, and disinfecting before and after every performance,
just so the show could go on. They realized it wouldn’t be prudent. The 4 shows on their final
weekend were sold out, which meant they would have been responsible for the 800 people who
would have attended. “Of course, we were all heartbroken because we all believed in the
message of the show, especially during these times,” Stella said. Dekada ’70, based on the novel
by Lualhati Bautista, is set in the martial law era of the Marcos dictatorship. Stella’s character
grapples with the issues of the time through the varied experiences of her husband and sons, until
she finds her own place in the struggle for justice.The show opened on February 21, just days
before the Senate passed its version of the anti-terrorism bill, a measure that casts a repressive
shadow over dissent and activism.“More than anything else – the financial loss, ‘yung udlot mo
bilang artist to perform – nasayangan talaga ako that we weren’t able to reach out to 800 more