1. Assignment  Monday: Read Trifles 728-41  Wednesday-Friday: No Regular class, come to your conference.  Full draft of your paper due 24 hours before your meeting time.

3. Brainstorm  What is drama anyway? How does Drama differ from other types of literature?  Who is drama for?  What does drama do?  What challenges do we face reading drama?

4. What is Drama?  Performance: Seeing & hearing  Action & Story  Actors who impersonate characters  Communal experience

5. Interpreting parts of a drama  Point of view or narrator  Setting: easier & harder  Plot  Theme  Characterization  Dialog  Performance  Irony: You & I=We vs. Them

6. Ancient Greek Theatre  All male cast, appeared in masks.  Dialog was somewhat musical, chanted  Chorus: Sang and danced  gave exposition  acted as groups of people to express concerns or voice questions.  Women in the audience?

7. Staging  some Costumes  Backdrops?  Cranes  Fixed location—action offstage  3 actors = multiple roles

8. Types of early drama  Characters were usually kings or other “great men”  Comedy: Life usually turns out well for the main character, and the primary purpose of the play is to amuse the audience/witty look at society.  Tragedy: Characters face serious and important challenges that end in disastrous failure or defeat for the protagonist.

9. Amphitheatre at Athens

10. Ancient Greek Theatre  https://youtu.be/aSRLK7SogvE?t=1m https://youtu.be/aSRLK7SogvE?t=1m

11. Medieval European Theatre  No permanent theatres: Pageant Wagons or churches, markets, inns, etc.  Bible stories, Saint's Lives, Moral themes  Plays were put on by workers’ guilds— costumes were what they could make.  Staging minimal

12. Medieval Pageant Wagon

13. 1 minute Reflection  What is interesting to you so far?  What is a question you have?  Who is drama for?  What does drama do?

14. Elizabethan & Renaissance  Traveling companies and also buildings constructed specifically for plays--shift to theatre for upper-class & educated.  Professional theatre companies  Little scenery—poetic language  Rich Costumes  Content expands beyond “spiritual” topics

15. Elizabethan Theatre  https://youtu.be/z_cTCdkCAcc https://youtu.be/z_cTCdkCAcc

16. Modern Drama  Proscenium Stage  Box Set  Fourth Wall  Realism and more  Everyday characters  Everyday situations and places  Women appear on stage  Detailed sets, props can be used symbolically  Special effects, microphones, lighting

17. Proscenium Stage

19. Reading Drama  Notice the setting and the set  Pay attention to stage directions  Imagine the action: think about Timing and Blocking  Look for symbolic actions or items

20. Interpreting Drama  What are the characters’ motives?  How does the dialog sound in your ear?  Look for a central problem or question  Look for dramatic irony  Imagine yourself as director.

21. Works Cited Delbanco, Nicholas and Alan Cheuse. Literature: Craft and Voice. Vol. 3 Drama. New York: McGraw Hill, 2010. Hekman Digital Archive. Hekman Library. Web. 16 April 2013. King, Kimball, Ed. Western Drama Through the Ages. Vol. 1. Westport [Conn.]: Greenwood, 2007. Ebook Academic Collection. Ebook.