Definition and Types of Drama
– Drama is a mode of fiction represented in performance.
– It includes plays, operas, ballets, and mimes.
– Drama can be performed in theaters, on radio, or television.
– It is considered a genre of poetry, distinct from epic and lyrical modes.
– The term ‘drama’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘deed’ or ‘act.’
– Mime tells a story solely through body movement.
– Music can be incorporated into drama, such as in opera or ballet.
– Musicals combine spoken dialogue and songs.
– Some dramas have incidental music or musical accompaniment.
– Closet drama is intended to be read rather than performed.
– Improvisation involves spontaneously devising a dramatic script.
– Drama can be combined with other art forms, like dance or poetry.
History of Western Drama
– Tragedy, comedy, and satyr play were the three genres of drama in ancient Greece.
– Thespis is credited with the innovation of an actor who speaks and impersonates a character.
– Only a small fraction of the works of ancient Greek dramatists have survived.
– Tragic dramatists presented tetralogies consisting of three tragedies and one satyr play.
– Comedy was recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BC.
– Roman drama developed after the expansion of the Roman Republic.
– Theatre spread across Europe and reached England during the Roman Empire.
– Livius Andronicus and Gnaeus Naevius were early Roman dramatists.
– Roman comedies were based on Greek subjects and introduced musical accompaniment.
– Plautus and Terence were renowned Roman comic dramatists.
– Flowering of drama occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries in England.
– Prominent playwrights included Shakespeare, Marlowe, Middleton, and Jonson.
– Historical plays celebrated the lives of past kings and drew inspiration from Greek and Roman mythology.
– Plays were written in verse, particularly iambic pentameter.
– Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written during the Restoration period.
– Known for sexual explicitness, urbane wit, and crowded plots.
– Comedies drew inspiration from French, Spanish, and classical plays.
– John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege were prominent playwrights.
– Henrik Ibsen and Bertolt Brecht made pivotal and innovative contributions to modern drama.
Opera, Pantomime, Mime, and Ballet
– Opera arose during the Renaissance as an attempt to revive classical Greek drama.
– It is strongly intertwined with western classical music.
– Richard Wagner had a major influence on the opera tradition.
– Wagner renewed the operatic form to emphasize the equal importance of music and drama.
– Pantomime is a type of musical comedy stage production.
– It was developed in England and is still performed throughout the United Kingdom.
– Mime is a theatrical medium where the action of a story is told through body movement.
– Performance of mime occurred in Ancient Greece.
– Ballet can emphasize the lines and patterns of movement or express emotion, character, and narrative action.
– Ballets are theatrical works that have characters and tell a story.
Creative Drama and Asian Drama
– Creative drama is used primarily in educational settings with children.
– It includes dramatic activities and games.
– Winifred Ward is considered the founder of creative drama in education.
– Creative drama helps develop creativity, imagination, and social skills.
– It can be used to teach various subjects and promote self-expression.
– Indian drama has a long history, with the earliest form being Sanskrit drama.
– Theatre in India faced discouragement or prohibition during Islamic conquests.
– Village theatre developed in regional languages from the 15th to the 19th centuries.
– The Bhakti movement influenced performances in several regions.
– Modern Indian theatre developed during the period of British colonial rule.
– Chinese theatre has a long and complex history, including forms like Beijing opera, Kunqu, and zaju.
– Guan Hanqing, a renowned Chinese dramatist, is celebrated for his zaju plays.
– Japanese Nō drama is a serious form that combines drama, music, and dance.
– Nō drama developed in the 14th and 15th centuries and is still performed in Japan today.
Notable Playwrights and Dramatic Forms
– Rabindranath Tagore was a pioneering modern playwright who explored themes of nationalism, identity, and spirituality in his Bengali plays.
– Girish Karnad is a noted playwright who uses history and mythology to critique contemporary ideas and ideals.
– Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Dattani are major Indian playwrights of the 20th century.
– Mohan Rakesh in Hindi and Danish Iqbal in Urdu are considered architects of new age Drama.
– Plays like Mohan Rakesh’s ‘Aadhe Adhoore’ and Danish Iqbal’s ‘Dara Shikoh’ are considered modern classics. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BC)—the earliest work of dramatic theory.
The term "drama" comes from a Greek word meaning "deed" or "act" (Classical Greek: δρᾶμα, drâma), which is derived from "I do" (Classical Greek: δράω, dráō). The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy.
In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word play or game (translating the Anglo-Saxon pleġan or Latin ludus) was the standard term for dramas until William Shakespeare's time—just as its creator was a play-maker rather than a dramatist and the building was a play-house rather than a theatre.
The use of "drama" in a more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. "Drama" in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). It is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies, adopted to describe "drama" as a genre within their respective media. The term "radio drama" has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance. It may also be used to refer to the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of radio.
The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception.
Mime is a form of drama where the action of a story is told only through the movement of the body. Drama can be combined with music: the dramatic text in opera is generally sung throughout; as for in some ballets dance "expresses or imitates emotion, character, and narrative action". Musicals include both spoken dialogue and songs; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue (melodrama and Japanese Nō, for example). Closet drama is a form that is intended to be read, rather than performed. In improvisation, the drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience.
