Theatre Foundations: History, Literature, and Theory
Domain 1 tests theatre as a historical sequence, as dramatic literature, and as theory: period conventions, genre and structure, and the ideas critics and practitioners use to explain performance.
Historical through-lines
- Greek: City Dionysia; masks, chorus, three-actor convention; skene; deus ex machina in Euripides.
- Roman: Seneca's rhetorical tragedy, Plautus/Terence comedy; spectacle and Vitruvian theatre architecture.
- Medieval: liturgical drama, mystery/miracle cycles, morality plays, pageant wagons and mansion stages.
- Commedia dell'arte: stock types, masks, lazzi, scenario-based improvisation.
- Renaissance/neoclassical: Shakespeare's flexible staging; French vraisemblance, bienséance, the three unities.
- Realism/naturalism: box set, fourth wall, Ibsen, Chekhov, early Stanislavski.
- Modern/contemporary: Brecht's alienation, Artaud's cruelty, Beckett's minimalism, Boal's spect-actor.
Theory and structure
Aristotle's Poetics treats mimesis, catharsis, hamartia, and plot as primary; the unities were later codified by neoclassical theorists, not prescribed by Aristotle. Freytag's pyramid describes rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement, but many modern plays use episodic or non-linear structure. Genre is a set of conventions, not a quality judgment.
Dramatic literature
Categories include tragedy, comedy, history, melodrama, farce, and tragicomedy; structure may be climactic (tight causal chain) or episodic (loose sequence). Devices such as soliloquy, aside, dramatic irony, and subplot shape audience knowledge. The well-made play (Scribe, Sardou) relies on exposition, secrets, reversals, and a climactic scène à faire.
Worked example
A question asks why Oedipus Rex is called a neoclassical model. Reasoning: Sophocles wrote before neoclassicism; Aristotle analyzed the play and praised its unity of action. French theorists later turned selected features into rules. The play has a single causal investigation, but its stage time and location are not strictly one day/one place. The correct answer distinguishes Aristotle's descriptive analysis from neoclassical prescriptive doctrine.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating the three unities as Aristotle's mandatory rules.
- Defining realism as literal everyday life rather than a representational style with conventions.
- Confusing mystery, miracle, and morality plays.
- Using 'comedy' only as humor; Dante's Commedia is not a stage comedy.
- Assigning the fourth wall to Greek theatre.