Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother.
Musicology is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus. Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist.
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), which are any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings and may communicate internally or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste).
The avant-garde is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society. It is frequently characterized by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability.
In fiction, a character is a person or other being in a narrative. The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made. Derived from the ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ, the English word dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed. Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person". In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers, has been called characterisation.
Performance studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses performance as a lens and a tool to study the world. The term performance is broad, and can include artistic and aesthetic performances like concerts, theatrical events, and performance art; sporting events; social, political and religious events like rituals, ceremonies, proclamations and public decisions; certain kinds of language use; and those components of identity which require someone to do, rather than just be, something. According to Mary S. Strine, Beverly W. Long, and Mary Frances HopKins, "scholars in interpretation and performance... recognize and expect disagreement not only about the qualities that make a performance "good" or "bad" in certain contexts, but also about what activities and behaviors appropriately constitute performance and not something else." Consequently, performance studies is an interdisciplinary field, drawing from theories and methods of the performing arts, anthropology, sociology, literary theory, cultural studies, speech communication, and others.
A Fabel is a critical analysis of the plot of a play. It is a dramaturgical technique that was pioneered by Bertolt Brecht, a 20th century German theatre practitioner.
Arnolt Bronnen was an Austrian playwright and director.
"Speak the speech" is a famous speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet (1601). In it, Hamlet offers directions and advice to a group of actors whom he has enlisted to play for the court of Denmark.
Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create an illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies. Interest in naturalism especially flourished with the French playwrights of the time, but the most successful example is Strindberg's play Miss Julie, which was written with the intention to abide by both his own particular version of naturalism, and also the version described by the French novelist and literary theoretician, Émile Zola.
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. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι.
The performative turn is a paradigmatic shift in the humanities and social sciences that has affected such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, ethnography, history and the relatively young discipline of performance studies. Central to the performative turn is the concept of performance.
Raymond Monelle. was a music theorist, teacher, music critic, composer and jazz pianist. Monelle wrote three books, dozens of articles on music, and many music criticism reviews in newspapers, mainly for Opera and The Independent His main field of research was Music Signification or, as it is also known, Music Semiotics. Towards the end of his life he wrote a novel, yet to be published, entitled Bird in the Apple Tree, about the adolescence of the composer Alban Berg.
Fodéba Keïta was a Guinean dancer, musician, writer, playwright, composer and politician. Founder of the first professional African theatrical troupe, Theatre Africain, he also arranged Liberté, the national anthem of Guinea.
Presentational acting and the related representational acting are opposing ways of sustaining the actor–audience relationship. With presentational acting, the actor acknowledges the audience. With representational acting, the audience is studiously ignored and treated as voyeurs.
Sofija Grandakovska is an academic, poet and author in the field of comparative literature studies and interdisciplinary studies in Holocaust, Jewish history, literature and culture, with a specialization in the Jewish and Holocaust history in the Balkans. Another area of interest is Byzantine studies. She has significant publications in literary and visual semiotics, literary theory, critics and interpretation and art.
Laurence Senelick is an American scholar, educator, actor and director. He is the author, editor, or translator of many books, including The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre.
