…drama is not made of words alone, but of sights and sounds, stillness and motion, noise and silence, relationship and responses.

J.L. Styan, Drama, Stage and Audience, 1975

 

Play = rappresentazione

To quote = citare

Floor = pavimento (dove si parla)

Curtain = sipario

 

One of the features of the drama is the stage directions which are information given by the playwright.

 

1. What comes to your mind in association with the world “drama”?

 

Drama is a literary genre written to be performed and it includes plays, tragedies, comedies and farces.

 

1. What has drama in common with poetry? Or with fiction?

 

Drama, poetry and fiction are very similar because they are written and they have the function to express something; besides they are made of raw materials, which are words, and of different sounds. Drama creates interactions with the audience. But in drama there is no intermediary between the audience and the action on the stage, there is no narrator as in fiction and no speaker as in poetry.

 

 

1. What is special about drama?

 

Drama is special because the characters, when they act, involve the audience within the representation. Drama creates interactions with the audience.

 

 

Drama, the tools

 

Playwright’s tool

• Dialogue: conversation between two or more characters.
• Monologue: speech made by a character to others who do not reply.
• Soliloquy: speech made by a character when alone on the stage.
• Aside: comment made by a character for the audience only.

 

The text of a play is a dialogue, which is a conversation between two or more characters. Dialogue has different purposes: it shows characters in interaction, revealing aspects of their personality and allows the action to develop through what they say. So they help the audience to understand what is going on and to create expectation about what will come next.

Drama focuses on characters, which embody idea, attitude and can symbolise moral values.

Stage directions are the playwright’s instructions about the use of face, voice, the kind of movement, gesture, body language, lighting and set.

The chain of action and reaction is the plot.

Plays come to life in performance where actors speak and move as the characters in the play might do and the performance is controlled by the director.

Sets or scenery like windows, furniture, stairways and the like indicate a specific place or create a particular atmosphere. Props, instead, are movable objects such chairs, trees, which mark scene changes.

Lighting can highlight individual characters, isolate various parts of the stage while costumes and makeup contribute to make plays memorable because they help the audience to understand the play’s time period and the character’s social class, role and age.

Besides plays require an interaction between actors and audience. The spectators are in the darkness but their reactions to the onstage action provide feedback to the actors and can therefore influence the performance.

 

 

On side = di lato

To stage = mettere su uno spettacolo

To set-set-set = ambientare

Mutual = reciproco

 

 

Traditional plays are organized into acts, which are organized into scene, where the time of the performance is the same of the time of the plot.