1. How to Get the Most Out of Reading a Play
Analyzing Drama
How to Get the Most Out of Reading a Play
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2. Become Familiar with the Vocabulary of Drama
Each profession has vocabulary that its practitioners use. In the theater, that vocabulary describes:
The structure of the play—the way ideas unfold.
The dramatic content of the play—the subject matter and themes explored.
The actors and the parts they play.
The speeches, the conversations, and even the silences.
The staging or movement of the actors.
The costumes, props, and sets.
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3. What Kind of Play Are You Reading?
Plays come in many broad categories, and the terms describing these categories sometimes overlap. Here are a few kinds of plays.
Comedy, Tragedy, Tragicomedy, or History
Classical or Modern
Realistic, Naturalistic, or Melodramatic
Five Act or Three Act or One Act
Knowing what kind of play you are reading gives you a way to look at the play’s construction, values, and themes.
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Classroom Activity
Discuss with your teacher the KIND of play you are reading. Use all the applicable terms. Consider what expectations you might have in light of the KIND of play it is.
With your teacher, discuss your expectations of the play you are studying in light of the several ways you can classify it.
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Kinds of Stages
Proscenium stage – The action of the play occurs behind an arch which separates the play from the audience.
Thrust stage – A portion of the stage extends out into the audience.
Theater-in-the-round – The stage is surrounded by the audience who are then sometimes drawn into interaction with the players.
Discuss if it would matter on what kind of stage the play you are studying might be performed. What demands does your particular play make on the staging?
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6. Vocabulary of Character
Protagonist – The character or characters whose fortunes we are most interested in following. In a romantic play, the protagonist is sometimes called the “romantic hero.”
Antagonist – The character or characters most opposed to the desires of the protagonist.
Foil – A character whose values or actions either mirror the protagonist’s or contrast them.
Stock Character – A stereotypical character, whose actions seem to have been taken from a mold
Round Character – A round character profits from experience and undergoes a development.
Flat Character – A flat character does not undergo any change or growth.
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7. Kinds of Speech in the Theater
Soliloquy – A speech delivered by a character alone or seeming to be alone on the stage.
Aside – A comment made that the audience can hear but that other characters on the stage cannot hear.
Monologue – A lengthy speech by a single character. The character may be alone or not.
Dialogue – Lines spoken in conversation by several characters.
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8. Act: The Major Division of the Play
ACT ONE.
Act One typically provides the EXPOSITION of the dramatic material, introduces major characters, establishes the setting, and forecasts the themes.
Act One introduces a CONFLICT within one or more characters or between characters.
What information does the playwright reveal in the exposition?
Which characters are introduced?
What is the setting?
What thematic ideas are suggested?
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The Middle Acts
The Middle Acts (Acts Two, Three, and Four, depending on the play) house the DEVELOPMENT of the plot and characters as well as continue to express aspects of the themes. These acts constitute the RISING ACTION of the play.
How have ideas introduced in Act One been developed in the middle acts? How have the issues of the play become more complex? More uncertain? How have the characters changed since they were introduced in Act One? What additional issues, problems, or complexities have arisen? Which issues have been resolved?
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The Final Act
In the final act, the conflict is resolved in the denouement, the conclusion of the play.
Characters have been rewarded, punished, or brought to an understanding of their situation. Social values have been established, validated, and affirmed or warnings have been issued.
In the final act of a tragedy, we have a catharsis—a purging of the emotions of pity and fear. We might feel a little empty. Some of us might even cry.
In the final act of a comedy, we laugh and cheer. The good guys have won, and there may even be a marriage in the offing!
How does each act develop the ideas of the play?
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CLASSROOM ACTIVITY
Identify the function of each act in the play you are studying.
What is the importance of each act to the play?
How does each act further the progression of the playwright’s theme?
What challenges does each act pose for the audience?
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Scenes
The scene is a smaller unit of the act.
In each scene, the playwright introduces characters or develops those already introduced.
The author may also introduce complications in the plot by revealing the motivation of certain characters or escalating the conflict between them.
Some scenes require changes in set or number of characters on stage.
Choose a few scenes from the play you are studying and identify the author’s purpose in the scene. How has the plot become more complex? What has been revealed about the characters? Why must the play have this scene?
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13. The Implications of Performance
With the exception of “Closet Dramas,” most plays are meant to be performed before an audience.
The expectation of live performance has implications for the playwright, the actors, and the producers of the play.
Good readers of plays take into account the performance possibilities of the text.
A play is not merely a novel without the descriptions.
Read a play as though you were going to direct it or act in it, and consider the choices suggested by the text.
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Who’s on Stage?
The physical limitations of the stage mean that the playwright must consider
How to get characters both on and off the stage.
How many characters can fit on the stage at one time.
How many physical settings the theater set-up can accommodate and how complex the sets can be.
The challenges of using live animals, babies, large machinery, vehicles, weaponry, or bodies of water on stage, for example.
The physical challenges of going from one scene to the next in terms of take-down and set-up as well as in terms of communicating to the audience the changes in time and place.
Discuss with your teacher the implications of moving from one scene to the next or one act to the next in the play you are studying. Has the playwright made it easy or hard for the performers to change to the next act or scene?
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15. Considerations for the Actor: To Show or Not to Show
In a play the actor must convey information not part of the written text.
Unlike in a novel where the narrator can express the contrast between a character’s inner life and his or her outer actions, in a play, the actor must select what to show to the other characters on the stage about his inner life and what to conceal from them.
Facial expressions, tone of voice, body movement, and even stillness and silence can reveal what words do not.
In small groups, discuss each character in the scene or act you are studying. What information, ideas, and feelings is the character expressing? What information, ideas, and feelings is the character concealing?
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Dialogue
In a play, most of the action is conveyed through dialogue— speech between two or more characters.
The tone of voice, the speed of delivery, and the pace of the pick-up between lines all help characterize each speaker, establish relations between characters, and move forward the plot.
Choose a passage of dialogue and rehearse it with a group, varying the tempo and tone. Discuss the effectiveness of the different choices you made. Do some characters speak more quickly than others? Why? Should some parts of the dialogue be paced more quickly or more slowly? Why?
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Dialect
Dialect is the accent of a character’s speech that can reveal his or her ethnic heritage, social class, and geographical origins.
Dialect can establish the setting of the play.
It can also identify a character as an insider or an outsider to a group.
Apply dialect to a character to see how speaking a part in dialect can enhance characterization or distort it.
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Movement
The director uses “blocking” to place characters in the space of the stage and to move them throughout the scene.
The text may suggest where the actors are standing, plus how and when they change position and why.
Characters who occupy front and center of the stage are often the most powerful in the scene.
Dynamic movement is often done on a diagonal line.
Horizontal lines indicate stability or stasis.
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19. Classroom Activity: Blocking
Study one scene in your play.
Then draw a diagram in which you identify where each character is located at the beginning of the scene. Now block the scene by moving characters on horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines to suggest their relationships with the other characters as the scene progresses.
Each blocking movement should be motivated by the text. Justify your blocking decisions at specific moments in the text by explaining how the words of the play trigger character movement.
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Unity of Time and Place
Because of the need to limit the duration of a performance as well as to work within the space of the stage, Aristotle said that the story of a drama should be limited in time and geography. Some rather extreme drama theorists have even said that the story of a play should not exceed a single day or a single location.
Consider the play you are studying. What decisions has the playwright made to limit the time over which the story occurs? What decisions has the playwright made to limit the locations of the play? Has the playwright narrowed, exceeded, or toyed with the bounds of time or space in any way? To what effect?
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Dramatic Irony
Sometimes in a play the audience knows something that a character on the stage does not know. Often what a character says or does not say is given special significance or even poignancy in light of what the audience knows to be a truth that the character has not perceived.
From the play you are reading, identify a moment of “dramatic irony.” What does this scene contribute to the development of the plot and the characters? How does it affect the audience’s experience of the drama?
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