NYSTCE Theater 166 flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Peripeteia

A sudden reversal of the protagonist's circumstances in a tragedy, often produced by a discovery or turn of events that inverts the character's fortune.

Anagnorisis

The moment of recognition or discovery in tragedy when a character moves from ignorance to knowledge, frequently about identity or the true cause of the crisis.

Hamartia

Often translated as tragic flaw, it is the error or misjudgment that contributes to a tragic protagonist's downfall; Aristotle treats it as a mistake, not necessarily a moral defect.

Catharsis

Aristotle's term for the purgation or clarification of pity and fear that tragedy is said to produce in the audience through the experience of the dramatic action.

Unities of drama

Neoclassical rules holding that a play should observe unity of action, and often of time (one day) and place (one setting), derived from readings of Aristotle.

Commedia dell'arte

An Italian improvisational theater tradition using masked stock characters, scenario outlines rather than full scripts, and rehearsed comic bits called lazzi.

Lazzi

Repeated comic bits or stage business performed by commedia dell'arte actors, often improvised around a scenario and inserted at opportune moments.

Alienation effect

Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt: staging techniques that remind the audience it is watching a play, encouraging critical distance rather than emotional identification.

Epic theater

Brecht's narrative-driven theatrical form using episodic structure, placards, direct address, and song to prompt social analysis instead of cathartic immersion.

Theater of the absurd

A mid-twentieth-century movement, associated with Beckett and Ionesco, that abandons causal plot and logical dialogue to dramatize the irrationality of existence.

Well-made play

A tightly plotted nineteenth-century dramatic formula built on exposition, a complicating secret, rising suspense, a mandatory scene, and a climactic resolution.

Given circumstances

In Stanislavski-based training, the facts of the play world, including time, place, relationships, and prior events, that an actor uses to justify behavior.

Super-objective

The overarching desire or purpose that unifies a character's smaller objectives across the whole play, guiding the actor's choices in every scene.

The magic if

Stanislavski's imaginative prompt in which the actor asks what they would do if the fictional circumstances were real, activating truthful behavior onstage.

Through-line of action

The continuous chain of objectives and actions connecting a character's behavior from first entrance to final curtain, giving the performance coherence.

Emotion memory

Stanislavski's technique of recalling a personal experience with a similar emotional quality to stimulate feeling that serves the character's situation.

Meisner repetition exercise

A partner-based training in which actors repeat observations back and forth to shift attention outward onto the other person and build impulsive, truthful response.

Proscenium stage

A performance space in which the audience faces one side of the stage through an architectural frame, favoring pictorial staging and controlled sightlines.

Thrust stage

A stage that projects into the auditorium with spectators on three sides, requiring staging that keeps actors visible to a wide arc of the house.

Arena stage

Theater in the round, with the audience surrounding the playing area on four sides; entrances come through aisles or vomitories and scenery is minimal.

Black box theater

A flexible, usually rectangular performance room with neutral walls and movable seating and lighting, adaptable to many staging configurations.

Stage directions

The playwright's written instructions about movement, setting, lighting, and delivery, printed in the script but not spoken by the actors.

Blocking

The planned pattern of actors' movements and positions onstage, set during rehearsal and recorded by the stage manager for consistency.

Stage manager

The production team member who schedules and runs rehearsals, records blocking and cues, and calls the technical cues during performances.

Dramaturg

The production team member who researches the play's text, history, and context, advises on script adaptation, and prepares materials for director and cast.

Tech rehearsal

A rehearsal integrating lighting, sound, scenery, and costumes with the actors, used to set and time cues before previews or opening.

Cue-to-cue

A technical rehearsal that skips dialogue between cues to set light, sound, and scene changes, focusing on transitions rather than continuous performance.

Dramatic irony

A condition in which the audience knows something a character does not, so the character's words or actions carry meaning the character cannot perceive.

Soliloquy

A speech delivered by a character alone onstage, revealing inner thought to the audience rather than to another character in the scene.

Aside

A brief remark spoken by a character that the audience is meant to hear while other characters onstage supposedly do not.

Rising action

The section of a play's structure following the inciting incident in which complications accumulate and tension builds toward the climax.

Denouement

The final unwinding of a play's plot after the climax, resolving remaining questions and establishing the new state of affairs.