Understanding Dramatic Theory, Styles, Conventions and Contexts
Theory and style as tools
You need working knowledge of major styles and movements and the conventions that identify them: Greek tragedy (chorus, hamartia, catharsis, unities), commedia dell'arte (lazzi, masks, stock types), Elizabethan theatre (soliloquy, aside, bare stage, boy actors), Restoration comedy, melodrama (stock characters, moral polarities, music), naturalism and realism (Stanislavski's system, given circumstances, objectives, the fourth wall), Brecht's epic theatre (Verfremdungseffekt, gestus, episodic structure, placards, direct address), Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty (sensory assault, cruelty as discipline, spectacle), absurdism (Beckett, Ionesco; circular structure, fractured logic), physical theatre, poor theatre (Grotowski), forum theatre (Boal, spect-actor), and postdramatic work.
Know conventions - soliloquy, aside, monologue, chorus, mask, mime, narration, flashback, split scene, cross-cutting, direct address, tableau, song, puppetry, multi-roling - and how context (historical, social, political, cultural, economic) shapes form and reception.
Traps
Questions punish name-dropping without application: quoting Brecht without explaining how an alienation effect works in a specific scene. Students conflate naturalism with realism, treat absurdism as mere nonsense rather than a response to postwar meaninglessness, and assume commedia is unscripted chaos rather than highly disciplined improvisation within fixed structures. Another trap is applying modern sensibilities without acknowledging historical context, or describing a convention without saying what it achieves.
Rule of thumb
For any style, answer: context → intention → convention → effect. Link each convention to the theory that justifies it.
Worked example: Brecht's placards are not decoration; they interrupt illusion (convention), serve the intention of keeping the audience critical, and derive from his context of rising fascism and desire for a thinking, not feeling, spectator.