Chapter 1: Theatre Language Drama: a particular kind of literature written to be performed; a pattern of words and actions with the potential for becoming living words and actions Theatre as an Art Form is different from other art forms It has unique properties not present in other forms: Live event The most important element of the theatre is the live interaction between performer and audience. For theatre to happen there must be an audience and performer. Transitory Art --It cannot be fixed or held in time --This is the ephemeral nature of theatre. It is a temporary event that lasts only for a finite amount of time, ie. the length of the actual performance. --It is not possible to exactly reproduce the same event every time. --Each production is unique; each performance in that production is unique. --A film or television show is static--it never changes because it is recorded. --Each production and performance of Master Harold and the Boys will be different from others. --This is different from the written play script, which remains static. --Plot, dialogue, basic stage directions, etc. always remain the same in the written script. Interpretive art --The production team interprets the script and finds ways to translate the meaning of the written words into a live production for a live audience. Collaborative Art --The creation of the stage production is a collaborative art. --The production team works together (collaborates) to translate the meaning of the written text into a staged performance. The Production Team --Includes the playwright, director, designers, and actors. --Together they will interpret the playwright’s work by filling in details of character, action, scenery, costumes, lighting and sound. --They communicate meaning to the audience using visual, verbal and emotional cues. The Playwright --The playwright is the theatre artist who authors the script that is frequently the starting point for theatrical creation. --uses language to express dramatic action. --responsible for determining the subject matter of the play. --decides where the action will take place and over how long a period of time. 1 --decides how the events of the drama will unfold. --For a play to make sense, it must have a beginning, middle and end. The Playwright’s Vision --The playwright creates a text that is the starting point or “jumping off” place for the creation of a production. --The production team collaborates to interpret the meaning of the script and realize the playwrights’ vision through scenery, costumes, lights, sound, etc. --The ensemble works to bring this interpretation to life through characterization, actor behavior, blocking, etc. --Together these people create a production for a live audience. Script or Playtext --The dialogue, stage directions, and character descriptions that together constitute the printed text of a play. Performance Text --The interpretive production of the playtext; what the audience sees and hears. -- The specific choices by the principal decision makers that create the fictive world through the use of Theatre languages. Contrast with Play text. Theatrical Conventions: devices of dramatic construction and performance that facilitate the presentation of stories on stage Theatre Languages--the verbal and nonverbal tools of communication used by theatre artists to organize the audience’s perceptions and to create the fictive world of the play. --Scenery, Lighting, Costume, Makeup, Actorly behavior --Actorly Behavior—all the actor does, through his/her own person to create a character living through fictive circumstances. Includes physical stance, movement, vocal quality, volume, timing, intellectual focus and interaction with other characters, props, and scenery. Fictive World: the world of the play; an alternate reality designed to be perceived by spectators. Fictive because it’s an illusion created out of imagination; a world because it is a complete image. --It is in the fictive world that characters exist and pursue their goals. Actors are not characters, they—with other theatre makers—simulate characters. The fictive world is the imaginative envisioning of many theatre workers made accessible to a spectator. It is a complex idea-driven form made palpable to the senses. --The spectator witnesses the work of the theatre workers and imagines the fictive world. “The willing suspension of disbelief” allows the fictive world to exist for and be responded to by the spectator. --The fictive world is the imagined universe where a play’s action takes place. Because it is imagined, it operates according to the laws devised by its makers. The creative artists, 2 esp. the principal decision makers, shape the performance text to make it correspond to the imagined fictive world. They create it out of their own private fund of impressions, drawing upon the real world only when they want to and only to the extent that seems appropriate. Audiences imagine the fictive world but do so by allowing the stimuli of the performance text to shape their thinking. Action --The term “action” refers to the movement of the actors and the unfolding of a play’s events. Action may be physical or psychological. Plot --The term “plot” refers to the sequence of actions that determine what happens in a play; the events that make up the play’s story. Exposition --Exposition is a strategy used by playwrights to give information or explain events not seen in the action of the play. This is information the audience needs to know in order to understand the plot and characters of a play; “describing.” Enactment --literally, to act out. The events presented on stage that the audience sees; “doing.” Emergent Meaning --The unfolding of events at enactment speed; a movement of consciousness or understanding. --The significance seen in each succeeding moment of the event alters with the observer’s shifting awareness. Conflict --Conflict is the “problem” or “problems” faced by the characters of the play that must be resolved. It can also be defined as the collision of two opposing forces. The way conflict is resolved is what makes a play interesting and compelling. Crisis --A unit of the dramatic action that brings about a significant change or climax. It is a situation in which opposing forces are clearly arrayed against each other, thereby forcing a decisive moment when things will go in either one direction or another. A crisis precipitates a climax. In a crisis, a major dramatic question is vividly set forth and an answer to that question is actively pursued. --There can be, and usually are, many crises in a play. Each crisis promotes a climax which moves the action forward. A major crisis is one which resolves the dramatic action as a whole. Often it is a scene in which the protagonist and antagonist meet in a way in which there can be no backing off or avoidance. 3 Climax -- Any point in a dramatic story when a crisis, either major or subsidiary, reaches a point of resolution. It is a moment at which opposing forces are so engaged that they create a high point of tension. It is the point at which the conflicts between those opposing forces resolve the immediate action. It is the culmination of the crisis, it grows from it. Resolution --end the conflict, wrap up the action, and/or bring the events to a conclusion. Chaos and disruption are smoothed away and loose ends are tidied up. Protagonist and Antagonist --The protagonist is the leading character of a play. S/he is the character the play is about and the one who changes the most over the course of the play. --The antagonist is the person or force opposing the protagonist. Ensemble --The ensemble is the group of actors who work closely together and share the responsibility for the performance of the play. Blocking --All the movement of the actors on the stage during a play. Dialogue --Dialogue is spoken language. The playwright writes the dialogue for the actors to speak out loud. --Sometimes, the playwright will indicate in the script that the actors are to improvise spoken language. The actors speak as their characters would. Dénouement --A device used by playwrights to bring all the events to a conclusion. Polar Conditions--a comparison between the circumstances in place early in the script/performance with those in place late in the script/performance; useful for analyzing the psychological changes in a character. 4 Master Harold…and the boys by Athol Fugard Athol Fugard is a prominent playwright, novelist, director, and actor whose work is mostly based on and around the South African apartheid. He has won multiple awards and has received numerous honorary degrees. Harold Athol Lannigan Fugard was born June 11th, 1932 in Middleburg, Cape Province, South Africa. His father was Polish/Irish and his mother was an Afrikaner. Because Fugard's father was disabled, his mother ran the family businesses: The Jubilee Residential Hotel and the St. George’s Park Tea Room. Fugard and his father had a tense relationship, which is why the writer decided to go by Athol (his grandfather's name) instead of Harold, his father's name. Fugard attended the University of Cape Town until he dropped out to travel around Africa, and later, he served on a merchant ship. He then worked as a journalist in Port Elizabeth. He married Sheila Meiring, an actress, and the two formed the Cape Town Circe Players, a theater workshop. His first play, Klaas and the Devil, premiered in 1957. Fugard first became aware of the harsh realities resulting from apartheid when he took a job as a clerk in the Native Commissioner’s Court in Fordsburg. There, he dealt with cases of black South Africans violating the “pass laws” (passports laws making it difficult for black South Africans to travel and/or migrate).