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Theatre techniques are procedures that facilitate a successful presentation of a play. They also include any practices that advance and enhance the understanding the audience brings to the action and the acting by the cast on stage.
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Theatre techniques are procedures that facilitate a successful presentation of a play. They also include any practices that advance and enhance the understanding the audience brings to the action and the acting by the cast on stage.
Theatre technique is part of the playwright's creative writing of drama, as a kind of mimesis rather than mere illusion or imitation of life, in that the playwright is able to present a reality to the audience that is different, yet recognisable to that which they usually identify with in their everyday lives.
Another aspect of this is that of creating the kind of dialogue that makes the playwright's characters come alive and allows for their development in the course of his dramatization.
The playwright's art also consists in the ability to convey to the audience the ideas that give essence to the drama within the frame of its structure. Finally, the feeling for the natural divisions of a play—including acts, scenes, and changes of place—its entries and exits, and the positioning of the cast are integral to playwriting technique.
One of the playwright's functions is that concerned with adaptations of existing traditional drama, such as Charles Marowitz’s collages of Hamlet and Macbeth and other re-interpretations of Shakespeare's works, as well as Tom Stoppard’s approaches in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead , Dogg's Hamlet , and Cahoot's Macbeth .
The director these days is responsible for the actual production of a play, as opposed to earlier days when it was the producer who, at least in Britain until the 1950s, had this task. In earlier centuries it was the author, an actor-manager, or a leading actor with whom the responsibilities of staging a drama were invested.
The director produces the play in the way he envisages how it ought to be seen as he interprets what the playwright intended within the drama; he takes care of the effectiveness of the rehearsals of the actors; and coordinates the work of designers and technicians in the production.
However, the playwright's work is still reflected in the director's prompt copy, a separate form of stage instructions worked out in detail by the director, in which each actor is given details as to what is happening onstage, where exactly he has to be in relation to the back, front, left, or right of the stage, and what he is to do at any one time during the play.
The stage manager has to work with the director, and ascertain whether both the director's objectives and the perceptions of the stage designers are compatible and realistic. They are usually the link between the director and the rest of the company, and are responsible for the director's visions being passed down to each actor and member of the running crew. They are also responsible for safety and running an orderly backstage area. They maintain the prompt book and the call board, to which rehearsal schedule notes are affixed for the cast.
Stagecraft overall has to address the various shortcomings of the stage's spatial and physical limitations. For example, the stage alone cannot be expected to provide wide and distant vistas, or vast spaces where armies gather or huge masses of people congregate. Natural phenomena such as thunderstorms or winds, that are often part of the drama, cannot be recreated in their original form. Furthermore, because of the distance involved, it is difficult for actors to portray the feelings, tensions and passions of their characters to the audience with much distinctiveness.
It is for these reasons that special technologies and techniques have been developed from classical times onward to supplement and augment the effects that are to be realised. Technical specialists help to implement these techniques by providing expertise in various areas of the production. The stage manager and their team must ultimately draw all these separate techniques together to create an effective and successful stage production.
The Classical unities of time, action and place were the main principles of French neo-classical drama during part of the 17th century.
They were introduced by Jean Mairet after a misreading of Aristotle's Poetics, and the critic Castelvetro insisted that playwrights and directors adhere to the unities. In the Poetics Aristotle had merely recommended that action should consist only of the main plot without any subplots, and that the time represented by action should not stretch beyond the length of one day. Time merely entered into his recommendations as a hint as to the limits of the attention span the audience could be expected to have. The unity of place, that of the confinement of the action in a play to one locality only, was not mentioned at all.
The effect of the three unities on French drama during this period was that their presentation became very restrictive, and it was only when later dramatists began to avoid mentioning specific times and places that the presentation of plays became more creative again.
In 1944, the Bengal playwright Natyaguru Nurul Momen, introduced the fourth unity in his pioneering tragedy play, Nemesis. In this epoch-making one character play (in other words, Monodrama), Nurul Momen immaculately maintained all the three Aristotelian unities of classical Greek theatre --- and added the fourth unity for the first time in world theatre.
In the preface of Nemesis the Natyaguru wrote, " In this play a fourth Unity is added to the traditional three unities of The Greek Tragedies -- Time, Space & Action. A new experimentation has been done by introducing a new unity --- "Unity of Person" despite maintaining the format of The three unities. "
Some dramatists and dramaturgists try to achieve particular effects that are not normally sought in a theatre presentation.
Bertolt Brecht coined the term "defamiliarization effect" (sometimes called "estrangement effect" or "alienation effect"; German Verfremdungseffekt ) for an approach to theater that focused on the central ideas and decisions in the play, and discouraged involving the audience in an illusory world and in the emotions of the characters. Brecht thought the audience required an emotional distance to reflect on what is being presented. See epic theater.
One of the oldest techniques that has been used often, is that of teichoscopy or the "viewing from the wall", in which actors observe events beyond the confines of the stage, such as a distant battle, and discuss it on stage while the battle is taking place, as opposed to the event being reported by messengers at a later time after the event has happened. Shakespeare uses this technique in the final scenes of the play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar .
Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode.
Tragedy is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis, or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure,” for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans, in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it.
Dramaturgy is the study of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage.
Stage combat, fight craft or fight choreography is a specialised technique in theatre designed to create the illusion of physical combat without causing harm to the performers. It is employed in live stage plays as well as operatic and ballet productions. With the advent of cinema and television the term has widened to also include the choreography of filmed fighting sequences, as opposed to the earlier live performances on stage. It is closely related to the practice of stunts and is a common field of study for actors. Actors famous for their stage fighting skills frequently have backgrounds in dance, gymnastics or martial arts training.
Epic theatre is a theatrical movement that arose in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creation of new political dramas. Epic theatre is not meant to refer to the scale or the scope of the work, but rather to the form that it takes. Epic theatre emphasizes the audience's perspective and reaction to the piece through a variety of techniques that deliberately cause them to individually engage in a different way. The purpose of epic theatre is not to encourage an audience to suspend their disbelief, but rather to force them to see their world as it is.
In his own time, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was rated as merely one among many talented playwrights and poets, but since the late 17th century has been considered the supreme playwright and poet of the English language.
The distancing effect, also translated as alienation effect, is a concept in performing arts credited to German playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Shakespeare's plays are a canon of approximately 39 dramatic works written by English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare. The exact number of plays as well as their classifications as tragedy, history, comedy, or otherwise is a matter of scholarly debate. Shakespeare's plays are widely regarded as among the greatest in the English language and are continually performed around the world. The plays have been translated into every major living language.
An overview of the theatre of France.
Metatheatre, and the closely related term metadrama, describes the aspects of a play that draw attention to its nature as drama or theatre, or to the circumstances of its performance. "Breaking the Fourth Wall" is an example of a metatheatrical device.
Bengali theatre primarily refers to theatre performed in the Bengali language. Bengali theatre is produced mainly in West Bengal, and in Bangladesh. The term may also refer to some Hindi theatres which are accepted by the Bengali people.
The architectural form of theatre in Rome has been linked to later, more well-known examples from the 1st century BC to the 3rd Century AD. The theatre of ancient Rome referred to a period of time in which theatrical practice and performance took place in Rome. The tradition has been linked back even further to the 4th century BC, following the state’s transition from monarchy to republic. Theatre during this era is generally separated into genres of tragedy and comedy, which are represented by a particular style of architecture and stage play, and conveyed to an audience purely as a form of entertainment and control. When it came to the audience, Romans favored entertainment and performance over tragedy and drama, displaying a more modern form of theatre that is still used in contemporary times.
Conceptualised by 20th century German director and theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), "The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre" is a theoretical framework implemented by Brecht in the 1930s, which challenged and stretched dramaturgical norms in a postmodern style. This framework, written as a set of notes to accompany Brecht's satirical opera, ‘Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’, explores the notion of "refunctioning" and the concept of the Separation of the Elements. This framework was most proficiently characterised by Brecht's nihilistic anti-bourgeois attitudes that “mirrored the profound societal and political turmoil of the Nazi uprising and post WW1 struggles”. Brecht's presentation of this theatrical structure adopts a style that is austere, utilitarian and remains instructional rather than systematically categorising itself as a form that is built towards a more entertaining and aesthetic lens. ‘The Modern Theatre Is the Epic Theatre’ incorporates early formulations of Brechtian conventions and techniques such as Gestus and the V-Effect. It employs an episodic arrangement rather than a traditional linear composition and encourages an audience to see the world as it is regardless of the context. The purpose of this new avant-garde outlook on theatrical performance aimed to “exhort the viewer to greater political vigilance, bringing the Marxist objective of a classless utopia closer to realisation”.
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory.
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. It is the oldest form of drama, though live theatre has now been joined by modern recorded forms. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Places, normally buildings, where performances regularly take place are also called "theatres", as derived from the Ancient Greek θέ
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is ὑποκριτής (hupokritḗs), literally "one who answers". The actor's interpretation of a role—the art of acting—pertains to the role played, whether based on a real person or fictional character. This can also be considered an "actor's role", which was called this due to scrolls being used in the theaters. Interpretation occurs even when the actor is "playing themselves", as in some forms of experimental performance art.
A play is a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between characters and is intended for theatrical performance rather than mere reading. The creator of a play is known as a playwright.
Nurul Momen was a Bangladeshi playwright, educator, director, broadcast personality, orator, academician, satirist, essayist, translator and poet. He served as a faculty member in the capacities of professor and dean at the faculty of Law in the University of Dhaka. He also served as a lawyer. He is called "Father of Bangladeshi theatre" and "Natyaguru" of Bangladesh. He was awarded the Bangla Academy Award in 1961, merely a year after its inception. He was also honoured by the People's Republic of Bangladesh with the Ekushey Padak in 1978, only a couple of years after this State honor was introduced.
Nemesis is a play written by Natyaguru Nurul Momen, considered one of the most successful experimental plays in Bengali theatre. It is a play with only one character, written in 1944 and published in the acclaimed literary journal "Shonibarer Chithi" in 1945 & as a book in 1948. Nemesis, a tragedy, set a milestone in the history of Bengali literature because of its unique feature and modern plot. National professor of Bangladesh Kabir Chowdhury explains, “Nemesis is his most famous work. It is an experimental drama where through dialogues the main and only character remembers his past. It shows how a promising personality falls prey to greed and loses his morality. Though it is a play based on one actor, the scope of the plot is wide and a number of other characters come in through the main character's reminiscences.”
Theatre in Bangladesh is believed to have its origin in the 4th century AD in the form of Sanskrit drama. The conquest of Bengal by the Gupta dynasty led the ingress of the northern Indian culture into the ancient Bangladeshi culture which eventually introduced the tradition of theatre in Bangladesh. At present, apart from the Sanskrit theatre, the influence of the European theatre and the indigenous folk culture can also be seen in the theatre art of Bangladesh.