Topics to be covered in AE 205 (term plan)

I. The Audience
o The theatre experience
o The actor-audience relationship
o the chemistry of actor-audience contact
o The group experience
o Psychology of groups
o How audience makeup affects the experience
o The separate roles of performers and spectators
a. How should the audience be involved?
b. Participation on direct action
◦ The imagination of the audience
 The dramatic imagination of spectators
 “Reality” of the imagination
◦ Realistic and nonrealistic theatre
 Realistic elements
 Nonrealistic elements
 Combining the realistic and the nonrealistic

II. Stage Fright

1. What is stage fright?
2. Some suggested causes
3.Do experienced actors have stage fright?
4. What can be done about it?
III. Speech-making
o Nervousness
o General Appearance and expression
o Where and how to act
o Eye interaction
o The voice
o The text
o Our hand-held notes
o Undesirable sounds and unnecessary words
o Practice brings theory to life

IV. Storytelling As Performance (Meddah)

o Story-teller in Turkey
V. Karagöz
o Shadow Play: Karagöz

VI. Improvisatory Popular Theatre

o The Turkish Ortaoyunu
o Ortaoyunu Faslı: Mahalle Baskını yahut Şalgam Hoca

VII. Comic Tricks in Karaöz and Ortaoyunu

VIII. Commedia Dell’arte

IX. Tragedy
o Traditional tragedy
o Modern tragedy

X. Comedy
o Characteristics of comedy
o Suspension of natural laws
oContrast between the social order and the individual
oThe comic premise
o Techniques of comedy
 verbal humour
 comedy of character
 plot complications
 Farce

XI. Epic Theatre

o Epic theatre of Brecht
o Expressionism
o Dramatic theatre vs Epic theatre
o The purpose of epic theatre
o Epic theatre in years

XII.The Theatre of the Absurd

. Theatre of the absurd: nonsense and non sequitur

XIII. The Merchant of Venice

 William Shakespeare
 What makes Shakespeare special
XVI. Antigone
 Jean Anouilh – Between the lines of his Antigone