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Terms within the definitions that are themselves defined in this glossary are in italic.
absurd  The notion that the world is meaningless, derived from an essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus," by Albert Camus, which suggests that man has an unquenchable desire to understand but that the world is eternally unknowable. The resulting conflict puts man in an "absurd" position, like Sisyphus, who, according to Greek myth, was condemned for eternity to push a rock up a mountain, only to have it always fall back down before it reached the top. The philosophical term gave the name to a principal postwar dramatic genre: theatre of the absurd.
act  (verb) To perform in a play. (noun) A division of a play. Acts in modern plays are bounded by an intermission or by the beginning or end of the play on each side. Full-length modern plays are customarily divided into two acts, sometimes three. Roman, Elizabethan, and neoclassic plays were usually printed in five acts, but the actual productions were not necessarily divided by intermissions, only stage clearings.
ad lib  A line improvised by an actor during a performance, usually because the actor has forgotten his or her line or because something unscripted has occurred onstage. Sometimes an author directs the actors to ad lib, as in crowd scenes during which individual words cannot be distinguished by the audience.
aesthetic distance  The theoretical separation between the created artifice of a play and the "real life" the play appears to represent.
agon  "Action," in Greek; the root word for "agony." Agon refers to the major struggles and interactions of Greek tragedies.
alienation effect  A technique, developed by German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), by which the actor deliberately presents rather than represents his or her character and "illustrates" the character without trying to embody the role fully, as naturalistic acting technique demands. This technique may be accomplished by "stepping out of character" - as to sing a song or to address the audience directly - and by developing a highly objective and didactic mode of expression. The actor is alienated from the role (estranged and distanced are perhaps better terms - all translations of the German word Verfremdung) in order to make the audience more directly aware of current political issues. This technique is highly influential today, particularly in Europe.
amphitheatre  In Rome, a large elliptical outdoor theatre, originally used for gladiatorial contests. Today the term is often used to designate a large outdoor theatre of any type.
anagnorisis  "Recognition," in Greek. Aristotle claimed that every fine tragedy has a recognition scene, in which the protagonist discovers either some fact unknown to her or him or some moral flaw in her or his character. Scholars disagree as to which of these precise meanings Aristotle had in mind. See also hamartia.
antagonist  In certain Greek tragedies, the opponent of the protagonist.
Apollonian  That which is beautiful, wise, and serene, in the theories of Friedrich Nietzsche, who believed drama sprang from the junction of Apollonian and Dionysian forces in Greek culture.
apron  The part of the stage located in front of the proscenium; the forwardmost portion of the stage. The apron was used extensively in the English Restoration period, from whence the term comes. Today, it is usually called the forestage.
aragoto  The flamboyant and exaggerated masculine style of acting employed in certain kabuki roles.
arena stage  A stage surrounded by the audience; also known as "theatre-in-the-round." Arena is a latin term meaning "sand," and it originally referred to the dirt circle in the midst of an amphitheatre.
aside  A short line in a play delivered directly to the audience; by dramatic convention, the other characters onstage are presumed not to hear it. Popular in the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and of the Restoration period, the aside has made a comeback in recent years and is used to good effect, in conjunction with the longer direct address, by contemporary American playwrights such as Lanford Wilson (born 1937) and Neil Simon (born 1927).
audition  The process whereby an actor seeks a role by presenting to a director or casting director a prepared reading or by "reading cold" from the text of the play being presented.
avant-garde  In military terms, the "advance-battalion" of an army that goes beyond the front lines to break new ground; in theatre terms, those theatre artists who abandon conventional models and create works that are in the forefront of new theatrical movements and styles.
backstage  The offstage area hidden from the audience that is used for scenery storage, for actors preparing to make entrances, and for stage technicians running the show. "Backstage plays," such as The Torchbearers and Noises Off, "turn the set around" and exploit the furious backstage activity that takes place during a play production.
biomechanics  An experimental acting system, characterized by expressive physicalization and bold gesticulation, developed by Russian play director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) in the 1920s.
black-box theatre  A rectangular room with no fixed seating or stage area; this theatre design allows for a variety of configurations in staging plays.
black musical  See black theatre.
black theatre  In America, theatre that is generally by, with, and about African Americans.
blocking  The specific staging of a play's movements, ordinarily by the director. "Blocking" refers to the precise indications of where actors are to move, moment by moment, during the performance. Often this is worked out ("blocked out") on graph paper by the director beforehand.
book  In a musical, the dialogue text, apart from the music and song lyrics.
border  A piece of flat scenery, often black velour but sometimes a flat, which is placed horizontally above the set, usually to mask the lighting instruments. Borders are often used with side wings, in a scenery system known as "wing and border."
box set  A stage set consisting of hard scenic pieces representing the walls and ceiling of a room, with one wall left out for the audience to peer into. This set design was developed in the nineteenth century and remains in use today in realistic plays.
Broadway  The major commercial theatre district in New York, bordered by Broadway, 8th Avenue, 42nd Street, and 52nd Street.
bunraku  A Japanese puppet theatre, founded in the seventeenth century and still performed today.
burlesque  Literally, a parody or mockery, from an Italian amusement form. Today the term implies broad, coarse humor in farce, particularly in parodies and vaudeville-type presentations.
business  The minute physical behavior of the actor, such as fiddling with a tie, sipping a drink, drumming the fingers, lighting a cigarette, and so forth. Sometimes this is controlled to a high degree by the actor and/or the director for precise dramatic effect; at other times the business is improvised to convey a naturalistic verisimilitude.
callback  After the initial audition, the director or casting director will "call back" for additional - sometimes many - readings those actors who seem most promising. Rules of the actors' unions require that actors be paid for callbacks exceeding a certain minimum number.
caricature  A character portrayed very broadly and in a stereotypical fashion, ordinarily objectionable in realistic dramas. See also character.
catharsis  In Aristotle's Poetics, the "purging" or "cleansing" of terror and pity, which the audience develops during the climax of a tragedy.
character  A "person" in a play, as performed by an actor. Hamlet, Oedipus, Juliet, and Willy Loman are characters. Characters may or may not be based on real people.
chiton  The full-length gown worn by Greek tragic actors.
chorus  (1) In classic Greek plays, an ensemble of characters representing the general public of the play, such as the women of Argos or the elders of Thebes. Originally, the chorus numbered fifty; Aeschylus is said to have reduced it to twelve and Sophocles to have increased it to fifteen. More recent playwrights, including Shakespeare and Jean Anouilh (1910-1987), have occasionally employed a single actor (or small group of actors) as "Chorus," to provide narration between the scenes. (2) In musicals, an ensemble of characters who sing and/or dance together (in contrast to soloists, who sing and/or dance independently).
chou  In xiqu, clown characters and the actors who play them.
classical drama  Technically, plays from classical Greece or Rome. Now used frequently (if incorrectly) to refer to masterpieces of the early and late Renaissance (Elizabethan, Jacobean, French neoclassical, and so on).
climax  The point of highest tension in a play, when the conflicts of the play are at their fullest expression.
comedy  Popularly, a funny play; classically, a play that ends happily; metaphorically, a play with some humor that celebrates the eternal ironies of human existence ("divine comedy").
comic relief  In a tragedy, a short comic scene that releases some of the built-up tension of the play - giving the audience a momentary "relief" before the tension mounts higher. The "porter scene" in Shakespeare's Macbeth is an often-cited example; following the murder of Duncan, a porter jocularly addresses the audience as to the effect of drinking on sexual behavior. In the best tragedies, comic relief also provides an ironic counterpoint to the tragic action.
commedia dell'arte  A form of largely improvised, masked street theatre that began in northern Italy in the late sixteenth century and still can be seen today. The principal characters - Arlecchino, Pantalone, Columbine, Dottore, and Scapino among them - appear over and over in thousands of commedia stories.
company  A group of theatre artists gathered together to create a play production or a series of such productions.
convention  A theatrical custom that the audience accepts without thinking, such as "when the curtain comes down, the play is over." Each period and culture develops its own dramatic conventions, which playwrights may either accept or violate.
cue  The last word of one speech that then becomes the "cue" for the following speech. Actors are frequently admonished to speak "on cue" or to "pick up their cues," both of which mean to begin speaking precisely at the moment the other actor finishes.
cycle plays  In medieval England, a series of mystery plays that, performed in sequence, relate the story of religion, from the Creation of the universe to Adam and Eve to the Crucifixion to Doomsday. The York Cycle includes forty-eight such plays.
cyclorama  In a proscenium theatre, a large piece of curved scenery that wraps around the rear of the stage and is illuminated to resemble the sky or to serve as an abstract neutral background. It is usually made of fabric stretched between curved pipes but is sometimes a permanent structure made of concrete and plaster.
Dada  A provocative and playful European art movement following World War I - characterized by seemingly random, unstructured, and "anti-aesthetic" creativity - that was briefly but deeply influential in poetry, painting, and theatre.
dan  In xiqu, the female roles and the actors who play them.
denouement  The final scene or scenes in a play devoted to tying up the loose ends after the climax (although the word originally meant "the untying").
deus ex machina  In Greek tragedies, the resolution of the plot by the device of a god ("deus") arriving onstage by means of a crane ("machina") and solving all the characters' problems. Today, this term encompasses any such contrived play ending, such as the discovery of a will. This theatrical element was considered clumsy by Aristotle and virtually all succeeding critics; it is occasionally used ironically in the modern theatre, as by Bertolt Brecht in The Threepenny Opera.
dialogue  The speeches - delivered to each other - of the characters in a play. Contrast with monologue.
diction  One of the six important features of a drama, according to Aristotle, who meant by the term the intelligence and appropriateness of the play's speeches. Today, this term refers primarily to the actor's need for articulate speech and clear pronunciation.
didactic drama  Drama dedicated to teaching lessons or provoking intellectual debate beyond the confines of the play; the dramatic form espoused by Bertolt Brecht. See also alienation effect.
dimmer  In lighting, the electrical device (technically known as a potentiometer) that regulates the current passing through the bulb filaments and, thereby, the amount of light emitted from the lighting instruments.
dim out  To fade the lights gradually to blackness.
Dionysia  Or "Great Dionysia" or "City Dionysia"; the week-long Athenian springtime festival in honor of Dionysus, which was, after 534 B.C., the major play-producing festival of the Greek year.
Dionysian  Passionate revelry, uninhibited pleasure-seeking; the opposite of Apollonian, according to Friedrich Nietzsche, who considered drama a merger of these two primary impulses in the Greek character.
Dionysus  The Greek god of drama as well as the god of drinking and fertility. Dionysus was known as Bacchus in Rome.
direct address  A character's speech delivered directly to the audience, common in Greek Old Comedy (see parabasis), in Shakespeare's work (see soliloquy), in epic theatre, and in some otherwise realistic modern plays (such as Neil Simon's Broadway Bound).
discovery  A character who appears onstage without making an entrance, as when a curtain opens. Ferdinand and Miranda are "discovered" playing chess in Shakespeare's The Tempest when Prospero pulls away a curtain that had been hiding them from view.
dithyramb  A Greek religious rite in which a chorus of fifty men, dressed in goatskins, chanted and danced; the precursor, according to Aristotle, of Greek tragedy.
documentary drama  Drama that presents historical facts in a nonfictionalized, or only slightly fictionalized, manner.
domestic tragedy  A tragedy about ordinary people at home.
double  (1) An actor who plays more than one role is said to "double" in the second and following roles. Ordinarily the actor will seek, through a costume change, to disguise the fact of the doubling; occasionally, however, a production with a theatricalist staging may make it clear that the actor doubles in many roles. (2) To Antonin Artaud, the life that drama reflects, as discussed in his book The Theatre and Its Double. See also theatre of cruelty.
downstage  That part of the stage closest to the audience. The term dates back to the eighteenth century, when the stage was raked so that the front part was literally below the back (or upstage) portion.
drama  The art of the theatre; plays, playmaking, and the whole body of literature of and for the stage.
dramatic  Plays, scenes, and events that are high in conflict and believability and that would command attention if staged in the theatre.
dramatic irony  The situation when the audience knows something the characters don't, as in Shakespeare's Macbeth, when King Duncan remarks on his inability to judge character - while warmly greeting the man (Macbeth) we already know plans to assassinate him.
dramaturge  A specialist in dramatic construction and the body of dramatic literature; a scientist of the art of drama. Dramaturges are fre-quently engaged by professional and academic theatres to assist in choosing and analyzing plays, develop production concepts, research topics pertinent to historic period or play production style, and write program essays. The dramaturge has been a mainstay of the German theatre since the eighteenth century and is becoming increasingly popular in the English-speaking world. Sometimes identified by the German spelling "Dramaturg."
dramaturgy  The science of drama; the art of play construction; sometimes used to refer to play structure itself.
dress rehearsal  A rehearsal, perhaps one of several, in full costume; usually also with full scenery, properties, lighting, sound, and technical effects. This is ordinarily the last rehearsal(s) prior to the first actual performance before an audience.
drop  A flat piece of scenery hung from the fly gallery, which can "drop" into place by a flying system.
empathy  Audience members' identification with dramatic characters and their consequent shared feelings with the plights and fortunes of those characters. Empathy is one of the principal effects of good drama.
ensemble  Literally, the group of actors (and sometimes directors and designers) who put a play together; metaphorically, the rapport and shared sense of purpose that bind such a group into a unified artistic entity.
environmental theatre  Plays produced not on a conventional stage but in an area where the actors and the audience are intermixed in the same "environment" and where there is no precise line distinguishing stage space from audience space.
epic theatre  As popularized by Bertolt Brecht, a style of theatre in which the play presents a series of semi-isolated episodes, intermixed with songs and other forms of direct address, all leading to a general moral conclusion or set of integrated moral questions. Brecht's Mother Cour-age is a celebrated example. See also alienation effect.
epilogue  In Greek tragedy, a short concluding scene of certain plays, generally involving a substantial shift of tone or a deus ex machina. Today, the epilogue is a concluding scene set substantially beyond the time frame of the rest of the play, in which characters, now somewhat older, reflect on the preceding events.
existential drama  A play based on the philosophical notions of existentialism, particularly as developed by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). Existentialism, basically, preaches that "you are your acts, and nothing else" and that people must be held fully accountable for their own behavior. No Exit contains Sartre's most concise expression of this idea.
exodos  In Greek tragedy, the departure ode of the chorus at the end of the play.
exposition  In play construction, the conveyance, through dialogue, of story events that have occurred before the play begins.
expressionism  An artistic style that greatly exaggerates perceived reality in order to express inner truths directly. Popular mainly in Germany between the world wars, expressionism in the theatre is notable for its gutsy dialogue, piercing sounds, bright lighting and coloring, bold scenery, and shocking, vivid imagery.
farce  Highly comic, lighthearted, gleefully contrived drama, usually involving stock situations (such as mistaken identity or discovered lovers' trysts), punctuated with broad physical stunts and pratfalls.
flat  A wooden frame covered in fabric or a hard surface and then painted, often to resemble a wall or portion of a wall. The flat is a traditional staple of stage scenery, particularly in the realistic theatre, since it is exceptionally lightweight, can be combined with other flats in various ways, and can be repainted and reused many times over several years.
fly  (verb) To raise a piece of scenery (or an actor) out of sight by a system of ropes and/or wires. This theatre practice dates back at least to ancient Greek times (see also deus ex machina).
fly gallery  The operating area for flying scenery, where fly ropes are tied off (on a pinrail) or where ropes in a counterweight system are clamped in a fixed position.
follow-spot  A swivel-mounted lighting instrument that can be pointed in any direction by an operator.
footlights  In a proscenium theatre, a row of lights across the front of the stage, used to light the actors' faces from below and to add light and color to the setting. Footlights were used universally in previous centuries but are employed only on special occasions today.
forestage  A modern term for apron, the small portion of the stage located in front of the proscenium.
found object  In scene or costume design (and art in general), an item that is found rather than created and subsequently incorporated into the finished design.
full house  Audience seating filled to capacity. See also house.
genre  French for "kind"; a term used in dramatic theory to signify a distinctive class or category of play, such as tragedy, comedy, farce, and so on.
geza  The stage right, semi-enclosed musicians' box in kabuki theatre. This term also refers to the music that is played in this box.
gidayu  The traditional style of chanting in kabuki and bunraku theatre. This term also refers to the singer-chanter himself.
greenroom  A room near the stage where actors may sit comfortably before and after the show or during scenes in which they do not appear. This room is traditionally painted green; the custom arose in England, where the color was thought to be soothing.
ground plan  A schematic drawing of the stage setting, as seen from above, indicating the location of stage-scenery pieces and furniture on (and sometimes above) the floor. A vital working document for directors in rehearsal, as well as for technicians in the installation of scenery.
hamartia  In Aristotle's Poetics, the "tragic flaw" of the protagonist. Scholars differ as to whether Aristotle was referring primarily to a character's ignorance of certain facts or to a character's moral defect.
hanamichi  In the kabuki theatre, a long narrow runway leading from the stage to a door at the back of the auditorium that is used for highly theatrical entrances and exits right through the audience.
Hellenistic theatre  Ancient Greek theatre during the fourth and third centuries B.C. The surviving stone theatres of Athens and Epidaurus date from the Hellenistic period, which began well after the great fifth-century tragedies and comedies were written. The Hellenistic period did produce an important form of comedy (New Comedy), however, and Alexandrian scholars during this period collected, edited, and preserved the masterpieces of the golden age.
high comedy  A comedy of verbal wit and visual elegance, usually peopled with upper-class characters. The Restoration comedies of William Congreve (1670-1729) and the Victorian comedies of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) are often cited as examples.
hikimaku  The traditional striped curtain of the kabuki theatre.
himation  The gownlike basic costume of the Greek tragic actor.
house  The audience portion of the theatre building.
hubris  In Greek, an excess of pride; the most common character defect (one interpretation of the Greek hamartia) of the protagonist in Greek tragedy. "Pride goeth before a fall" is an Elizabethan expression of this foundation of tragedy.
improvisation  Dialogue and/or stage business invented by the actor, often during the performance itself. Some plays are wholly improvised, even to the extent that the audience may suggest situations that the actors must then create. More often, improvisation is used to "fill in the gaps" between more traditionally memorized and rehearsed scenes.
inciting action  In play construction, the single action that initiates the major conflict of the play.
ingenue  The young, pretty, and innocent girl role in certain plays; also used to denote an actress capable of playing such roles.
interlude  A scene or staged event in a play not specifically tied to the plot; in medieval England, a short moral play, usually comic, that could be presented at a court banquet amid other activities.
intermission  In England, "interval"; a pause in the action, marked by a fall of the curtain or a fade-out of the stage lights, during which the audience may leave their seats for a short time, usually ten or fifteen minutes. Intermissions divide the play into separate acts.
jing  In xiqu, the "painted-face" roles, often of gods, nobles, or villains.
jingju  "Capital theatre" in Chinese; the Beijing (or Peking) Opera, the most famous form of xiqu.
k¯oken  Black-garbed and veiled actors' assistants who perform various functions onstage in kabuki theatre.
kabuki  One of the national theatres of Japan. Dating from the seventeenth century, the kabuki features magnificent flowing costumes; highly stylized scenery, acting, and makeup; and elaborately styled choreography.
kakegoe  Traditional shouts that kabuki enthusiasts in the audience cry out to their favorite actors during the play.
kathakali  A traditional dance-drama of India.
lazzo  A physical joke, refined into traditional business and inserted into a play, in the commedia dell'arte. "Eating the fly" is a famous lazzo.
Lenaea  The winter dramatic festival in ancient Athens. Because there were fewer foreigners in town in the winter, comedies that might embarrass the Athenians were often performed at this festival rather than at the springtime Dionysia.
liturgical drama  Dramatic material that was written into the official Catholic Church liturgy and staged as part of regular church services in the medieval period, mainly in the tenth through twelfth centuries.
low comedy  Comic actions based on broad physical humor, scatology, crude punning, and the argumentative behavior of ignorant and lower-class characters. Despite the pejorative connotation of its name, low comedy can be inspired, as in the "mechanicals" scenes of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Good plays, such as this one, can mix low comedy with high comedy in a highly sophisticated pattern.
mask  (noun) A covering of the face, used conventionally by actors in many periods, including Greek, Roman, and commedia dell'arte. The mask was also used in other sorts of plays for certain occasions, such as the masked balls in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado about Nothing. The mask is a symbol of the theatre, particularly the two classic masks of Comedy and Tragedy. (verb) To hide backstage storage or activity by placing in front of it neutrally colored flats or drapery (which then become "masking pieces").
masque  A minor dramatic form combining dance, music, a short allegorical text, and elegant scenery and costuming; often presented at court, as in the royal masques written by Ben Jonson (1572-1637), with scenery designed by Inigo Jones (1573-1652), during the Stuart era (early seventeenth century).
melodrama  Originally a term for musical theatre, by the nineteenth century this became the designation of a suspenseful, plot-oriented drama featuring all-good heroes, all-bad villains, simplistic dialogue, soaring moral conclusions, and bravura acting.
metaphor  A literary term designating a figure of speech that implies a comparison or identity of one thing with something else. It permits concise communication of a complex idea by use of associative imagery, as with Shakespeare's "morn in russet mantle clad."
metatheatre  Literally, "beyond theatre"; plays or theatrical acts that are self-consciously theatrical, that refer back to the art of the theatre and call attention to their own theatricality. Developed by many authors, including Shakespeare (in plays-within-plays in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream) and particularly the twentieth-century Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello (Six Characters in Search of an Author, Tonight We Improvise), thus leading to the term "Pirandellian" (meaning "metatheatrical"). See also play-within-the-play.
mie  A "moment" in kabuki theatre in which the actor (usually an aragoto character) suddenly freezes in a tense and symbolic pose.
mime  A stylized art of acting without words. Probably derived from the commedia dell'arte, mime was revived in France during the mid-twentieth century and is now popular again in the theatre and in street performances in Europe and the United States. Mime performers traditionally employ whiteface makeup to stylize and exaggerate their features and expressions.
modern classic  A term used to designate a play of the past hundred years that has nonetheless passed the test of time and seems as if it will last into the century or centuries beyond, such as the major works of Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett. Contrast with classical drama.
monologue  A long unbroken speech in a play, often delivered directly to the audience (when it is more technically called a soliloquy).
morality play  An allegorical medieval play form, in which the characters represent abstractions (Good Deeds, Death, and so on) and the overall impact of the play is moral instruction. The most famous of these plays in English is the anonymous Everyman (fifteenth century).
motivation  That which can be construed to have determined a person's (or character's) behavior. Since Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938), actors have been encouraged to study the possible motivations of their characters' actions. See also objective.
musical  A generic name for a play with a large number of songs, particularly when there is also dancing and/or a chorus.
musical comedy  A popular form of twentieth-century theatre, with singing and dancing, designed primarily for entertainment.
mystery play  The most common term referring to medieval plays developed from liturgical drama that treated biblical stories and themes. (They were also known as pageant plays in England, as passion plays when dealing with the Crucifixion of Jesus, and as Corpus Christi plays when performed in conjunction with that particular festival.) Unlike liturgical dramas, which were in Latin, mystery plays were written in the vernacular (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian versions exist) and were staged outside the church.
n¯o  The classical dance-drama of Japan. Performed on a bare wooden stage of fixed construction and dimension and accompanied by traditional music, n¯o is the aristocratic forebear of the more popular kabuki and remains generally unchanged since its fourteenth-century beginnings.
naturalism  An extreme form of realism, which advanced the notion that the natural and social environment, more than individual will power, controlled human behavior. Its proponents, active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sought to dispense with all theatrical convention in the search for complete verisimilitude: a slice of life, as the naturalists would say.
neoclassicism  Literally, "new classicism," or a renewed interest in the literary and artistic theories of ancient Greece and Rome and an attempt to reformulate them for the current day. A dominant force in seventeenth-century France, neoclassicism promoted restrained passion, balance, artistic consistency, and formalism in all art forms; it reached its dramatic pinnacle in the tragedies of Jean Racine (1639-1699).
New Comedy  Greek comic dramas - almost all of which are now lost - of the late fourth to the second centuries B.C. Considerably more realistic than the Old Comedy of Aristophanes, New Comedy employed stock characters and domestic scenes; it strongly influenced Roman author Plautus and, through him, Renaissance comedy.
objective  The basic "goal" of a character. Also called "intention" or "victory." Since Konstantin Stanislavsky, the actor has been urged to discover his or her character's objectives and, by way of "living the life of that character," to pursue that character's objective during the course of the play.
off-Broadway  The New York professional theatre located outside the Broadway district; principally in Greenwich Village and around the upper East and West Sides. Developed in the 1950s, when it was considered highly experimental, the off-Broadway theatre is now more of a scaled-down version of the Broadway theatre, featuring musicals and commercial revivals as much as (or more than) original works.
off-off-Broadway  A term designating certain theatre activity in New York City, usually nonprofessional (although with professional artists involved) and usually experimental and avant-garde in nature. Off-off-Broadway developed in the 1970s as a supplement to the commercialism of both Broadway and, increasingly, off-Broadway.
onnagata  "Women-type" roles in kabuki, which, like all the roles, are played by men.
open the house  A direction to admit the audience. See also house.
orchestra  (1) In the ancient Greek or Roman theatre, the circular (in Rome, semicircular) ground-level acting area in front of the stagehouse, or skene. It was used primarily by the chorus. (2) In modern theatre buildings, the main ground-level section of the audience, which usually slopes upward at the rear. Distinct from the mezzanine and balconies and ordinarily containing the more expensive seats.
parabasis  A "coming-forward" of a character in Greek Old Comedy who then gives a direct address to the audience in the middle of the play. In Aristophanes' plays, the parabasis is often given in the author's name and may have been spoken by Aristophanes himself. The parabasis was often unrelated to the plot and dealt with the author's immediate political or social concerns.
parados  The ode sung by the chorus entering the orchestra in a Greek tragedy; the space between the stagehouse (skene) and audience seating area (theatron) through which the chorus entered the orchestra.
parody  Dramatic material that makes fun of a dramatic genre or mode or of specific literary works; a form of theatre that is often highly entertaining but rarely has lasting value.
pathos  "Passion," in Greek; also "suffering." The word refers to the depths of feeling evoked by tragedy; it is at the root of our words "sympathy" and "empathy," which also describe the effect of drama on audience emotions.
peripeteia  In the Anglicized form, "peripety"; the reversal of the protagonist's fortunes that, according to Aristotle, is part of the climax of a tragedy.
pièce bien faite  See well-made play.
play-within-the-play  A play that is "presented" by characters who are already in a play; like "The Murder of Gonzago," which is presented by "players" in Hamlet. Many plays are in part about actors and plays and contain such plays-within-plays; these include Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Jean Anouilh's The Rehearsal, and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew.
plot  The events of the play, expressed as a series of linked dramatic actions; more generally, and in common terms, the story of the play. The plot is the most important aspect of play construction, according to Aristotle.
postmodern  A wide-ranging term describing certain post-World War II artistic works, characterized by nonlinearity, self-referentiality if not self-parody, and multiple/simultaneous sensory impressions.
practical  In stage terminology, a property that works onstage the way it does in life. For example, a "practical" stove, in a stage setting, is one on which the characters can actually cook. A "nonpractical" stove, by contrast, is something that only looks like a stove (and may in fact be a stove without insides).
problem play  A realistic play that deals, often narrowly, with a specific social problem. George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, for example, is virtually a dramatic tract on prostitution. The term was most popular around the beginning of the twentieth century; today it is mostly descriptive of certain movies for television.
producer  (1) In America, the person responsible for assembling the ingredients of a play production: financing, staff, theatre, publicity, and management. Not ordinarily involved in the day-to-day artistic direction of the production, the American producer nonetheless controls the artistic process through her or his authority over personnel selection and budgeting. (2) Until recently, in the English theatre, the theatre artist Americans refer to as the director.
prologue  In Greek tragedy, a speech or brief scene preceding the entrance of the chorus and the main action of the play, usually spoken by a god or gods. Subsequently, the term has referred to a speech or brief scene that introduces the play, as by an actor in certain Elizabethan plays (often called the chorus) and in the Restoration. The prologue is rarely used in the modern theatre.
properties  Or "props"; the furniture and hand-held objects (hand props) used in play productions. These are often real items (chairs, telephones, books, etc.) that can be purchased, rented, borrowed, or brought up from theatre storage; they may also, particularly in period or stylized plays, be designed and built in a property shop.
proscenium arch  The arch separating the audience area from the main stage area. The term derives from the Roman playhouse, in which the proscenium (literally, pro skene, or "in front of the stage") was the facing wall of the stage. Modern thrust and arena stages have no proscenium.
proscenium theatre  A rectangular-roomed theatre with the audience on one end and the stage on the other, with both areas separated by a proscenium arch. The proscenium theatre was first popular in the late seventeenth century and reached its apogee in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Still the basic theatre architecture of America's Broadway and of major European theatre companies.
protagonist  In Greek tragedy, and subsequently in any drama, the principal character, often opposed by an antagonist.
raked stage  A sloped stage, angled so that the rear (upstage) area is higher than the forward (downstage) area. A raked stage was standard theatre architecture in the seventeenth century and is often used today in scene design but rarely in a theatre's permanent architecture.
realism  The general principle that the stage should portray, in a reasonable facsimile, ordinary people in ordinary circumstances and that actors should behave, as much as possible, as real people do in life. Although realism's roots go back to Euripides, it developed as a deliberate contrast to the florid romanticism that swept the European theatre in the mid-nineteenth century. See also naturalism, which is an extreme version of realism.
recognition  See anagnorisis.
rehearsal  The gathering of actors and director to put a play into production; the period in which the director stages the play and the actors develop and repeat their dialogue and actions; etymologically, a "reharrowing," or repeated digging into. In French, the comparable term is répétition.
repertory  The plays a theatre company produces. A company's current repertory consists of those plays available for production at any time.
Restoration  In England, the period following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In the theatre, the period is particularly noted for witty and salacious comedies, through to William Congreve's brilliant The Way of the World in 1700.
revival  The remounting of a play production after its initial closing, usually by the same theatre company and/or employing many or most of the same artists. The term is not normally used to describe fresh restagings, by other artists, of older plays.
rising action  In dramatic structure, the escalating conflict; events and actions that follow the inciting action.
ritual  A traditional cultural practice, usually religious, involving precise movements, music, spoken text, and/or gestures, that serves to communicate with deities. Ritual is often incorporated into plays, either as conventions of the theatre or as specific dramatized actions.
romanticism  A nineteenth-century European movement away from neoclassic formalism and toward outsized passions, exotic and grotesque stories, florid writing, and all-encompassing worldviews. Supplanted in the late century by realism, romanticism survives today primarily in grand opera and nineteenth-century-based musicals.
rotating repertory  The scheduling of a series of plays in nightly rotation. This is customary in most European theatres and in many American Shakespeare festivals; it is otherwise rare in America. See also repertory.
samisen  The three-stringed banjolike instrument used in kabuki and bunraku.
satire  A play or other literary work that ridicules social follies, beliefs, religions, or human vices, almost always in a lighthearted vein. Satire is not usually a lasting theatre form, as summed up by dramatist George S. Kaufman's classic definition: "Satire is what closes on Saturday night."
satyr  A mythological Greek creature, half man and half goat, who attended Dionysus and represented male sexuality and drunken revelry; goatskin-clad followers of Dionysus who served as the chorus of the satyr play.
satyr play  The fourth play in a Greek tetralogy. Satyr plays were short bawdy farces that parodied the events of the trilogies that preceded them.
scansion  The study of verse for patterns of accented and unaccented syllables; also known as "metrics."
scene  (1) The period of stage time representing a single space over a continuous period of time, now usually marked either by the rise or fall of a curtain or by the raising or lowering of lights but in the past often marked simply by a stage clearing; often the subdivision of an act. (2) The locale where the events of the play are presumed to take place, as represented by scenery (as in "the scene is the Parson's living room"). (3) Of scenery, as "scene design."
scenery  The physical constructions that provide the specific acting environment for a play and that often indicate, by representation, the locale where a scene is set; the physical setting for a scene or play.
scenography  Scene design, particularly as it fits into the moving pattern of a play or series of plays. Scene design is four-dimensional, comprising three physical dimensions plus time.
scrim  A theatrical fabric woven so finely that when lit from the front it appears opaque and when lit from behind it becomes transparent. A scrim is often used for surprise effects or to create a mysterious mood.
script  A play's text as used in and prior to play production, usually in manuscript or typescript rather than in a published version.
semiotics  The study of signs, as they may be perceived in literary works, including plays. Semiotics is a contemporary tool of dramaturgical analysis that offers the possibility of identifying all the ingredients of drama (staging as well as language) and determining the precise conjunctions between them.
setting  Or "set," the fixed (stable) stage scenery.
sheng  In xiqu, the male roles and the actors who play them.
shite  The principal character (the "doer") in n¯o.
skene  The Greek stagehouse (and root word of our scene). The skene evolved from a small changing room behind the orchestra to a larger structure with a raised stage and a back wall during the Greek period.
slapstick  Literally, a prop bat made up of two hinged sticks that slap sharply together when the bat is used to hit someone; a staple gag of the commedia dell'arte. More generally, slapstick is any sort of very broad physical stage humor.
slice-of-life  Pure naturalism: stage action that merely represents an ordinary and arbitrary "slice" of the daily activity of the people portrayed.
soliloquy  A monologue delivered by a single actor with no one else onstage, sometimes played as the character "thinking aloud" and sometimes as a seeming dialogue with the (silent) audience.
stage business  See business.
stage directions  Scene descriptions, blocking instructions, and general directorial comments written, usually by the playwright, in the script.
stage left  Left, from the actor's point of view.
stage right  Right, from the actor's point of view.
stock character  A character recognizable mainly for his or her conformity to a standard ("stock") dramatic stereotype: the wily servant, the braggart soldier, the innocent virgin, and so on. Most date from at least Roman times.
stock situation  One of a number of basic plot situations, such as the lover hiding in the closet, twins mistaken for each other, and so on, which, like stock characters, have been used in the theatre since Plautus and before.
style  The specific manner in which a play is shaped, as determined by its genre, its historical period, the sort of impact the director wishes to convey to the audience, and the skill of the artists involved. The term generally refers to these aspects inasmuch as they differ from naturalism, although it could be said that naturalism is a style.
stylize  To deliberately shape a play (or a setting, a costume, or so on) in a specifically non-naturalistic manner.
subplot  A secondary plot in a play, usually related to the main plot by play's end. The Gloucester plot in King Lear and the Laertes plot in Hamlet are examples.
subtext  According to Konstantin Stanislavsky, the deeper and usually unexpressed "real" meanings of a character's spoken lines. Of particular importance in the acting of realistic plays, such as those of Anton Chekhov, where the action is often as much between the lines as in them.
surrealism  An art movement of the early twentieth century, in which the artist sought to go beyond realism into superrealism (of which surrealism is a contraction).
symbolism  The first major antirealistic movement in the arts and in the theatre. Symbolism, which emphasizes the symbolic nature of theatrical presentation and the abstract possibilities of drama, flourished as a significant movement from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, when it broke into various submovements: expressionism, surrealism, theatricalism, and so on.
tableau  A "frozen moment" onstage, with the actors immobile, usually employed at the end of a scene, as the curtain falls or the lights dim.
tetralogy  Four plays performed together in sequence. In ancient Greek theatre, this was the basic pattern for the tragic playwrights, who presented a trilogy of tragedies, followed by a satyr play.
text  A playscript; sometimes used to indicate the spoken words of the play only, as apart from the stage directions and other material in the script.
theatre-in-the-round  See arena stage.
theatre of alienation  See alienation effect, epic theatre.
theatre of cruelty  A notion of theatre developed by the French theorist Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). Artaud's goal was to employ language more for its sound than for its meaning and to create a shocking stream of sensations rather than a coherent plot and cast of characters. Although Artaud's practical achievement was slight, his theories have proven extraordinarily influential.
theatre of the absurd  See absurd.
theatricalist  A style of contemporary theatre that boldly exploits the theatre itself and calls attention to the theatrical contexts of the play being performed. This term is often used to describe plays about the theatre that employ a play-within-the-play.
theatron  From the Greek for "seeing place"; the original Greek theatre.
thespian  Actor; after Thespis, the first Greek actor.
thrust stage  A stage that projects into the seating area and is surrounded by the audience on three sides.
tragedy  From the Greek for "goat song"; originally meant a serious play. The tragedy was refined by Greek playwrights (Thespis, sixth century B.C., being the first) and subsequently the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) into the most celebrated of dramatic genres: a play that treats, at the most uncompromising level, human suffering. The reason for the name is unclear; a goat may have been the prize, and/or the chorus may have worn goatskins.
tragic flaw  See hamartia.
tragicomedy  A play that begins as a tragedy but includes comic elements and ends happily. Tragicomedy was a popular genre in the eighteenth century but is rarely employed, at least under that name, in the modern theatre.
traveler  A curtain that, instead of flying out (see fly), moves horizontally and is usually opened by dividing from the center outward.
trilogy  Three plays performed in sequence; the basic pattern of ancient Greek tragedies, of which one - Aeschylus' The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) - is still extant.
trope  A written text, usually in dialogue form, incorporated into the Christian church service. In the tenth century A.D. these became the first liturgical dramas.
troupe  A group of actors who perform together, often on tour. See also company.
unities  The unity of place, unity of time, unity of action, and unity of tone were the four "unities" that neoclassic critics of the seventeenth century claimed to derive from Aristotle; plays said to "observe the unities" were required to take place in one locale, to have a duration of no more than one day (in an extreme interpretation, in no more time than the duration of the play itself), and to concern themselves with no more than one single action. Aristotle made no such demands on playwrights, however, and very few authors have ever succeeded in satisfying these restrictive conventions.
unit set  A set that, by the moving on or off of a few simple pieces and perhaps with a change of lights, can represent all the scenes from a play. The unit set is a fluid and economical stag-ing device, particularly useful for Shakespeare productions.
upstage  (noun) In a proscenium theatre, that part of the stage farthest from the audience; the rear of the stage, so called because it was in fact raised ("up") in the days of the raked stage. (verb) To stand upstage of another actor. Upstaging is often considered rude, inasmuch as it forces the downstage actor to face upstage (and away from the audience) in order to look at the actor to whom she or he is supposed to be speaking. Figuratively, the term may be used to describe any sort of acting behavior that calls unwarranted attention to the "upstaging" actor and away from the "upstaged" one.
vaudeville  A stage variety show, with singing, dancing, comedy skits, and animal acts; highly popular in America from the late 1880s to the 1930s, when it lost out to movies, radio, and subsequently television.
verisimilitude  The appearance of actual reality (as in a stage setting).
wagoto  In kabuki, "gentle-style" acting performed by certain male romantic characters.
waki  The secondary character in n¯o.
well-made play  Pièce bien faite in French; in the nineteenth century, a superbly plotted play, particularly by such gifted French playwrights as Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) and Victorien Sardou (1831-1908); today, generally used pejoratively, as to describe a play that has a workable plot but shallow characterization and trivial ideas.
West End  The commercial theatre district of London, England.
wings  In a proscenium theatre, the vertical pieces of scenery to the left and right of the stage, usually parallel with the footlights.
xiqu  Chinese for "tuneful theatre"; the general term for all varieties of traditional Chinese theatre, often called "Chinese Opera."
zadacha  Russian for "task"; (though commonly translated as "objective"); according to Konstantin Stanislavsky, the character's (fictional) tasks (or goals) that the actor must pursue during the play.





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