Theater - CLEP Humanities

Beckett, who helped define the "Theatre of Absurd," wrote Waiting for Godot without ever actually bringing the title character onstage. Instead, the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, argue about Godot, each other, and the meaning of life without having the unseen Godot interfere.

Anton Chekhov, born in Russia in 1860, was one of the pre-eminent playwrights of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Working closely with the director and acting theorist Konstantin Stanislavski, Chekhov's focus on subtext and tightly wound narratives proved highly influential in worldwide theater circles. One of his best known plays and a key example of his style is The Cherry Orchard, a play about a landed Russian family dealing with their newfound poverty.

Elizabethan theater, the era of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Johnson, was rather crude in its stagecraft. The stage was a platform that jutted into the audience without a proscenium, and extensive costumes and sets were not present. Additionally, lighting the stage was essentially unheard of, but sound effects and certain special effects were possible, particularly explosions and fire.

The Ring of Nibelung, commonly known as the "Ring Cycle," is the most famous composition by the German opera composer Richard Wagner. Written over twenty-six years, the four pieces that make up the cycle, The Rhine Gold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods, all feature many of Wagner's signature elements: a mythic story, melodramatic devices, and a challenging score.

The King and I is a musical retelling of the story of the real life Anna Leonowens, who was governess to the children of King Mongkut of Siam. The 1951 musical was one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's largest hits, and was subsequently made into a film starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner.

Stephen Sondheim based his 1962 musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum on the Roman comedies of Plautus. The play, set in Rome itself, centered on the humorous machinations of a slave. The play was another success after his previous work Gypsy and West Side Story, and got turned into a film also featuring the play's star Zero Mostel.

The fortunes of the plays of William Shakespeare underwent a severe cratering during the Restoration era of the late seventeenth century. The era's over-the-top performances and focus on farces made Shakespeare's works seem out of place. David Garrick, the preeminent actor and theater impresario of the eighteenth century in England, introduced a naturalist style and new effects in stagecraft which also helped repopularize the work of Shakespeare.

In Greek drama, the ultimate fates of the characters, particularly the tragic heroes, were known to the audience, usually thanks to the chorus. The chorus was a group of actors who would explain the background and major events of the play's story. The chorus is one of the key features of ancient Greek theater.

The proscenium arch is the name for the outer framing of the performance area at a theater that demarcates the performing area for the audience. The physical arch was a necessity for centuries, creating a frame for the audience's view of the stage. Beginning in the twentieth century, many theater artists began performing in spaces without a proscenium, and new forms of theater developed that openly broke down the "fourth wall" between the performers and the audience.

In a large theater, the "pit" is a small area between the stage and the audience that is lower than the stage itself. This area is made to hold the orchestra, which places them next to the performers on stage, but out of the view of the audience. This position also allows for the performers in a musical to see the orchestra's conductor.

The ancient Greeks largely invented the Western dramatic tradition, but their own style was highly specific in the nature of its performance. All shows were held in open amphitheaters with all male ensembles performing in masks. Stories were also highly regimented, with a chorus being required to explain events and tragedies and comedies being presented as entirely separate kinds of work.

In every play, as it is written and often in a playbill, a cast list is necessary to describe the characters and the actors needed to play them. In Shakespeare's time, the Latin phrase "dramatis personae," meaning the "dramatic people," was used to indicate such a list. Today the Latin terminology is not universal, but still in widespread use.

Theater "in the round" is a format which features the audience sitting in a circle around the stage. This creates a different environment for the performers and audience, which forces a play to be performed in a different manner than usual. This approach has typically been used in more modern theater to differentiate it from film.

William Shakespeare's plays, whether comedies or tragedies, typically are divided into five separate acts. This was based off of Roman structures, and was the popular format in Renaissance drama. This structure was formally described and analyzed by the German author Gustav Freytag in his 1863 Die Technik des Dramas.

In any theatrical production, the person who is responsible for all of the elements to go off smoothly and in the proper order is the stage manager. While the least creative position among the production crew's leadership, the stage manager is also the most necessary. The stage manager is the conduit between the director and all the technical functions in a play, and "calls" the show by announcing when various elements can go off.

The term "upstage" refers to the back of the stage, furthest away from the audience. Before theaters began using auditorium-style seating, where the audience's seats are arranged in rows with each row progressively higher, the audience would stand or sit on a flat floor. Stages were often built on an angle, with the rear of the stage at a higher elevation than the front, so that audiences could see what was happening at the back of the stage. When an actor is told by the director to move "upstage," he is being told to walk towards the rear of the stage.

"Blocking" refers to predetermined movements by the actors. As a company begins to rehearse a play, the director will give the actors their blocking in addition to their lines. This ensures that actors are in a particular space at a certain time. This makes the actors' lives easier because a scene should be the same every time. It also ensures that the audience can see what is going on without any of the actors being covered up by another.

When actors are given directions for movement, the stage is divided into regions so that everyone goes to the same place. These regions are always determined based on the viewpoint of the actor. As the actor looks at the audience, "stage right" is to the actor's right. This means that, from the audience's point of view, they are moving to the left side of the stage.

Kabuki theater began in Japan, near Kyoto, in the 17th century. It features complex stage design and elaborate makeup. Traditionally, a kabuki performance could last for an entire day. Such lengthy performances happen even today.