Understanding Drama: Forms, Elements, and Genres
Forms of Expression in Drama
- Dialogue: The conversation between two characters.
- Monologue: The mode of expression when one character is speaking. It is also called a soliloquy.
- Aside: This is a way for a character to speak their thoughts aloud, with the understanding that other characters on stage do not hear them.
- The Chorus (as a collective character that can):
- a) Be the awareness or memory of the character.
- b) Embody the figure of a prophet to predict events that will develop later.
- c) Serve as a narrator or embody general reflections of the author.
- d) Embody a community.
Development of Action
The dramatic action, like narrative action, is structured as follows:
- Exposition: The beginning of the play, presenting the most important information.
- Knot (Rising Action): The time of greatest tension, where the plot thickens.
- Outcome (Denouement): The moment when the problem in the development of the work is resolved.
Secondary Text (Stage Directions)
Provides information for theatrical performance.
Dimensions:
- On the action:
- 1) Data and information on the place where the action takes place.
- 2) Lighting, with which you express the time of day, a specific space, etc.
- 3) Sounds to indicate or cause various effects.
- About the Characters: Costumes, movements, gestures, etc.
The Theater: The Drama
The primary purpose of a dramatic text, although it can be read, is its representation on stage before spectators. This task is carried out by actors who play characters, led by a director who organizes and transforms the written text into a show.
Characters:
- 1) Main: Those on whom the weight of the action rests. They can be:
- Protagonist
- Antagonist
- 2) Secondary: Provide major support.
- 3) Allegorical: Embody abstract ideas such as justice, freedom, death, or even religious concepts.
Elements of a theatrical production include: Wardrobe, Lighting, Sound, Scenery.
Main Dramatic Genres
- Tragedy: Presents terrible conflicts between characters who tend to be heroes, kings, or people of noble status. They are victims of invincible passions and struggle against a fate that always wins, leading to their destruction and often death.
- Comedy: Develops pleasant or moderately serious conflicts, but almost always fun, with regular characters, although of high lineage.
- Drama: The characters struggle against adversity, which causes damage. Comic elements may be involved. The drama in Spain would be called tragicomedy, between the 15th and 18th centuries.
Minor Dramatic Subgenres:
- Auto Sacramental: A drama in one act and written in verse. It deals with deep issues through allegorical characters. Example: The Great Theater of the World.
- Entremés: A short, one-act comic piece of popular character, which was represented as an intermediate or end of a function.
- Appetizer: Work of comic character, Golden Century, it was between two acts of an extensive work. Example: The Altarpiece of Wonders by Cervantes.
- Farce: Short, satirical work of comic character, whose origins date back to Greek theater. Current examples include Valle-Inclán and Lorca.
- Opera: A play entirely sung, with a tragic theme.
- Melodrama: A work of little literary interest, which often accentuates the division of the characters into morally good and evil, to satisfy vulgar sentimentality.