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About drama
A piece of literary works , that are supposed to be PERFORMED, not to be read. A narrative art in which a playwright has learned to present a story. Stories are presented to give pleasure, to entertain, to ridicule (for example: in a country where the leader of the country corrupt and the people can do nothing, so the playwright shows the story, in which people ridicule the leader It will entertain the audience/the reader, because the audience/the reader is common people) Portrays a REAL LIFE, portrays Human Nature. That is why, the story must be the Range of Human Nature. Drama, like prose fiction utilizes PLOT and CHARACTERS, develops a THEME, arouses EMOTION or appeals to humor.
Plot is the sequence of incidents/events, of which a story is composed, presented in a significant order. Characters are the actors/the players. Characterization is the way the writer describes that characters (the personality of the character). a. Discursive Method: a method that the writer uses to describe the character by his own word. b. Dramatic Method: the way the writer describes the personality of the character through their dialogues. Sometimes the readers/the audiences know the personality of the characters from the dialogues. The dialogue we know that someone is friendly, kind, bad, evil etc. c. Contextual Method: the readers know the personality of the characters from another characters. For example: from gossiping. But sometimes it is reliable, for there is subjectivity. The audiences know the writers idea through the characters action/acting. How they (the actors) translate the writers idea MUCH depends on the actors. Theme is the underlying/central/control idea. For example: the function of truthfulness in life, sometimes life is bitter, but we must face it. Because drama is reflection of real life, the theme must be in The Range of Human Nature.
Because drama is written primarily to be performed, not to be read, it normally presents: Its action, through actors Its impact is direct, immediate and heightened by the actors skill. Spectators see what is done and hear what is said. The experience of the play is registered directly upon their senses. Where the work of prose fiction may tell us: - what a man looks like, in one paragraph, - how he moves or speaks, in a second, - what he said, in a third, - how his auditors respond, in a fourth, the acted PLAY, presents this material ALL AT ONCE. On a stage It can forcefully command the spectators attention. (the stage is lighted, the theater is dark, spectators almost literally pinned to the seats, there is nowhere they can go, there is nothing to look at). Unlike the fiction writer or the poet, the playwright is NOT DEPENDENT on the power of words alone. Before the audience The experience, it creates is a communal experience, and its impact is intensified.
Many people believe that the first drama was based on 4 things: the mimetic faculty the sympathetic magic a belief in gods a fear of star vision Supposing a primitive society has taken to agriculture where grows rice corn. Having no science, the members of such a society tend to think that the food is in the hands of certain natural forcesin other words gods. forces There is no science to teach them about the turning of the earth, the regular appearance of spring after winter. When winter comes it seems to them that the god of life has died, killed perhaps by the god of death. How the god of fertilitythe life-god, the corn-godbe brought to fertility lifecorn-god life again? Obviously by sympathetic magic.
And so come magical ceremonies. If a wax or wooden image represents a man, a man should represent a god. And so perhaps a member of the community pretends to be the life-god and another lifepretends to be the death-god. They fight and the life-god is skilled. deathlifeBut then, the life-god miraculously rises again, kills the winter-god, lifewinterdances over his corpse in triumph. Now, according to the law of sympathetic magic, what has magic, happened in mere representation must happen in fact. The real god of fertility must come back to life, and in fact, he does. The earth is fruitful again. Magic is triumphed. here you have acting, here you have a plot; action (fighting) leads to climax (death of the god) and the climax leads to a happy denouement resurrection. This is drama but also religious.
A group of singers sing together accompanied by music. The song develops into dialogue and action. it is played by boys. they move from one place to another one The play is concerned with religion. to confirm their religion. is played around the church. the actors: the monks, the priests and the choirchoirboys. Such was the origin of the mystery. a. The mystery-play mysteryb. The Miracle-play Miraclec. The Morality-play Morality-
The mystery-play was the dramatic mysteryrepresentation of some important Biblical theme, such as the Nativity (the birth of Jesus Christ) or the Resurrection (the rising of Jesus from the tomb; the rising of all the dead on the Last Day). Priests took part in the plays, though it is not certain that they wrote them. The mystery-play mysteryproper centered-around the Crucifixion centeredand the Resurrection. (crucify: kill (somebody) by nailing him to a cross).
The miracle-play in such plays the theme miraclepassed from the Scriptural story (based on the Bible) to that of the lives of the Saints. The plots were much more varied, the characters nearer to human experience and the style rather more urbane. The morality-play registered a further moralityadvance. In such plays virtues and vices were presented on the stage. Abstractions such as Justice, Mercy, Gluttony (habit and practice of eating (and drinking) too much).
It becomes secular (not concerned with spiritual or religious affairs) a pageant run on wheels. is displayed throughout the town. with/without scenery. costume: of grotesque and primitive sort. actors: amateur (members of various companies. The noblemen builds a playhouse.
Renaissance
People in the 15th 16th C were bored with the Medieval Age and they turned to a rereading of the works of Greek and Roman Literature, to a re-examination of reClassical Learning (Greek Learning). This movement is called The Renaissance, that means: in a narrow sense: a rebirth of interest classical learning. in a broader sense: The Renaissance refers to Humanism, as a rebirth of individualism as a new freedom of thought and action. It is also called THE ELIZABETHAN AGE.
The Drama
The actors: no actresses. Womens roles are acted by boys who have a slender figure and usually with unchanged voice. costume--symbolical The theme: about royal family. Backgroundwars. The audience: consists of the nobility and the humble citizens. The plays: the works of Shakespeare (1564 1616) Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet etc. One of the well known Greek Literature is Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The Puritan Agethe collapse of the Age drama Restoration Drama: - the actorsthere are actors and actors actresses - the themeno certain theme. Drama theme is just for amusement. - the audiencethe nobility only audience - the playSiege of Rhodes play (Davenant), Indian Queen (Howard)
Fundamentally, there is no great differences between the Restoration and that in the 18th century. The audience audienceboth the nobility and the humble citizens. The playsShe Stop to Conquer plays (Goldsmith), The School for Scandal (Sheridan)
Modern Drama
After the Age of Decay, English Drama is much influenced by Hendrik Ibsen (1828 1906). He is a Norwegian and called The Father of Problem Plays. He teachesdrama must deal with human emotions, teaches with things near to ordinary men and women. So modern drama is drama of ideas, based on the contemporary social conditions. His worksThe Pillars of the Community, The Wild works Duck, Ghost, Hedda Gabler etc.
With a theatre, a stage, actors, an audience, music, dance, pantomime, gesture, action, costume, setting to draw on in the creation of a unified play, the playwright is obviously composing a work of art with more than words. The playwright, however, uses words, and his product is thus a form of literature. A play exists on paper, before and after its performance; hence it can be read. Editors now supply the readers of early plays with a helpful initial information which compensates for the bareness of the original text. Increasingly in modern times the playwright knows that if his play makes a genuine impact in the theater, it will be read by a great number of people who follow the drama as readers whether they can be spectators or not
Playwrights have even become somewhat merciful to the reader in supplying more external guidance to the time, place, setting and characters. For example: Bernard Shaw expanded both descriptive and interpretive support of the dialogue in the versions of his plays published to be read. His preface, often added to after the play had been performed, draw the reader s attention to values in society and life. The playwright here has the opportunity to reach the reader with clues to the interpretation he hopes for. The entire force of the playwright s art has been directed toward making the reader perform the play on the stage-even, if the reader is well-enough stagewellinformed, on the particular kind of stage. The story will owe its vitality, finally, to our ability to relate with it in life. The reader may therefore read through the stage to reality or directly from the page to reality. Drama makes powerful condition; comments on human nature and the human condition; it reveals human truth arising out of characters under pressure of situation.
The main character in a plot is called the protagonist, his opponent is called the antagonist, or it is not a person, the antagonistic force. He (the player) may talk to the audience in (1) Soliloquies: characters are presented as speaking to themselvesthemselves-that is, they think out loud; (2) Asides: characters turn from the persons with whom they are conversing to speak directly to the audience, thus letting the audience know what they are really thinking or feeling as opposed to what they presented to be thinking or feeling. Plot the playwright orders and connects the events in a story to form a plot, a causal or motivated sequence of actions which introduce a conflict into the lives of a group of characters.
That conflict is the basis of a plotPerrine: plot Conflict is a clash of action, ideas, desires or will. . . conflict of person against person--characters may be person--characters pitted against some other person or group of persons . conflict of person against environmentthey may environment be in conflict with some external force (physical nature, society or fate). conflict of person against himself/herselfthey himself/herself may be in conflict with some elements in their own natures. The conflict may be physical, mental, emotional, or moral.
The exposition, or preliminary situation the exposition is all the information necessary for the reader to grasp the initial situation, to be able to go on with the play. The exposition must be clear: who are those people, where are they, when is it, who is speaking to whom about what? The inciting or exciting force or challenge the inciting force is the first part of the exposition which is dynamic that is, which contains a challenge, threat, or danger to have the condition of the protagonist as first glimpsed. The characteristic most exciting force have in common is that they confront the main characters or protagonist with a situation he will not accept without resistance. The threat maybe from an enemy or rival, from the protagonist s past, from another aspect of the protagonist s nature, from any source that arouses his will.
The rising action, or complicationthe rising action, sometimes called the complication because it ties the preliminary situation into a knot, consists of the actions taken by the protagonist and by the forces against him. The rising action usually consists of incident in pairs, a move and a countermove, the countermove producing the next move. Or each action is a consequence of the antecedent action and becomes in turn an antecedent for another consequence. The diversity of the forces that can be made to operate in a dramatic conflict, and of the dramatic effects that arise from the kind and order of the incidents, is so great that no rules can be offered except that the sequence should arise in intensity and finally resolve itself within the potential of the situation and characters.
The climax, or turning point (sometimes preceded by the crisis, which make the direction of the turn final). The climax, or turning point, is the event that determines how the conflict will end favorably or unfavorably for the protagonist. The denouement, resolution, or (in tragedy) catastrophe. The denouement or catastrophe presents the outcome, dispose of subplots, and gives a glimpse of a new, stable situation.
Speech is characteristic-voice, enunciation (ucapan), pronunciation, accent, dialect, speech rate, vocabulary range (variasi kata)-all these and more attributes of speech daily tell us things about everyone we listen to. Speech is both characteristic and Dialogue is supported constantly by its physical accompaniment, action by movement, and in the total scene, by the setting or scenery. Characters welcome callers, speed parting guest, answer telephones, pass tea-cups, lose tempers, draw swords, swing fists, talking all the while. Stage business, as it is called, is an active accompaniment of and supplement to the dialogue. It may set out the speeches or overwhelm them in calculated violence and confusion, but a careful fusing of action and dialogue is the joint preoccupation of playwright, director and actor.
Meaning in Drama
The meaning, or theme, of a play-that truth about human life, nature, or playexperience the playwright has founded his play story upon and adhered to in selecting and rejecting the psychology, language and actions of his characterscharacters-is sometimes stated, phrased, or explicitly dramatized in the play. The theme of a play is often a basic truism (kebenaran yang tidak dapat disangkal lagi/mendasar) about human natures knowledge of itself and of the ordering of that moral world which is possible to it. conflicts and their resolutions as precipitated between men and women, love and hate, tradition and revolt, desire and duty, passion and law, stick close to our wisdom about ourselves and our universe. The final meaning of a play, however, is the product of total impression. In this sense, theme is structural; it is led up to (prepare, introduce) and affirmed by the interaction upon the reader of all the elements of the play. A play often stage its final conclusion about human life; if it does not, such a conclusion will be implicitly formulated by the reader.