DRAMA Derives from the Greek word “dran,” which means “to do” or “to perform”

Why read plays? Words feed imagination. You don’t need to rely on a director’s interpretation. Reading allows the reader to enter the “playwright’s created world.” Use the language, characters, arrangement, description of settings and directions for staging to interpret the play.

Plays are: Written to be performed on stage. Performed for human entertainment, amusement, diversion, much like novels or short stories. Like stories, in that they can be told realistically, abstractly, surrealistically or absurdly.

Performance vs. Reading When a play is performed, audiences pick up information from the set and the actions and reactions of the characters. Playwrights provide stage directions, instructions from the author, to give guidance on character descriptions, staging, entrances and exits. (see page 1328)

Miller’s contribution Originally from New York Graduated from University of Michigan in Won Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for Death of a Salesman. One of the most successful playwrights of the 1940s and 1950s (golden age of movies before heyday of television

Miller’s contribution Concerns, technique in DOAS similar to social realism. Characters use ordinary speech and deal with recognizable family problems. The characters’ behaviors suggest larger implications (social contexts). Adds facets to realistic drama to allow readers to see inside Willy Loman’s head.

Understanding plays Plays can include many different characters in different settings. Main divisions of plays are acts; their ends are indicated by lowering and raising the curtain or changing the lighting. Within acts, playwrights use scenes when the location of action changes or when a new character enters.

Setting Setting is the cultural and physical environment as well as the time when the action takes place. Miller is careful to use the social context that he places this family in to make a greater statement. Props and set help define the setting. Setting sometimes is developed through exposition. Exposition provides background information about the characters or the scene through dialogue.

Plot Plot is the author’s arrangement of incidents in the play. The plot is the framework, and Aristotle said the plot is the most important element. Patterns: exposition, conflict, complication, climax and resolution. Flashbacks can be used to give the audience an understanding or show why present events have meaning.

Plot continued Plots can contain subplots: a secondary action that reinforces or contrasts with the main plot. As the plot approaches its climax, or high point of the action, dramatic tension (the audience’s desire to see the conflict resolved) increases.

Theme Theme: Major ideas or moral precepts the play illustrates.

Themes in Death of a Salesman Hypocrisy “Cult of personality” The salesman Illusion vs. reality Money = success The American Dream Tragedy of the common man Change ( and the inability to see it) Truth vs. lies Enlightenment Self-knowledge, awareness Search for identity Denial Consumer society

Style Style: the manner in which the playwright expresses himself or herself. This includes imagery, symbolism, diction and sentence structure. Playwright must use dialogue to let us know about character or background information. Soliloquy allows the playwright to give information about a character without letting other characters know the first character’s motivation. The character voices thoughts aloud to the audience.

Style continued An aside is a passage or remark a character speaks to the audience, giving the illusion that, while the audience hears them, the other characters on stage do not.

Tragedy – Sophocles, Aristotle Presents courageous individuals who confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat and even death. Greek tragedy tended to be public.

Protagonist – Aristotle, Sophocles Someone regarded as extraordinary rather than typical. Stature is important because it makes his/her fall more terrifying. Hamartia: Protagonist has error or frailty that seals his/her fate. An internal tragic flaw. Accepts responsibility for downfall.

Tragedy – Miller (1863) “the common man is an apt subject for tragedy.” “tragic feeling is evoked... [when] a character is ready to lay down his life … to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity.” “Tragedy, then, is the consequence of man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.”

Tragedy – Miller ( ) “underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world... The common man who knows this fear the best.”