Theatre 140: F/Play Analysis
Week 1
Monday:
Artist
-
actor
-
playwright
-
designers
-
director
-
dramaturg
Medium
-
actors
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dialogue
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sets, lights, costume
-
theatre space
Audience
-
live
-
group
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feedback cycle with performers
"The medium is the message" Marshall McLuhan
To think about: to what extent
do the specific artists/media/audience of theatre determine the range of
its possible meanings?
Wednesday: Types of Theatre Producing Organizations in USA today
New York City
- Broadway (professional, house over 500)
- Off-Broadway (professional, house 100-500)
- Off-off-Broadway (semi professional, house under 100)
Regional Theatres
- Professional Repertory Companies (GeVa in Rochester)
- Touring houses/companies (professional or semi-prof. Auditorium Theatre in Rochester)
- Semi-professional regional companies (Downstairs Cabaret in Rochester)
Other theatre
- Summer Stock (semi-professional usually)
- University (educational)
- Community Theatres (amateur)
- Schools (educational/amateur)
- retirement homes, prisons, youth services organizations, halfway houses, etc.
Performance studies
- Personal performance
- Social, public, religious performance rituals
Typical Seasons for Regional Reps, Semi Professional companies, University theatres:
Varied program of new plays, classics, and musicals
Programming to serve a specific population
Children's theatre, Latino or African American theatres, women's or gay theatres
Friday Theatre Tour day; reading "Theatre
Spaces"
Alice Austin is a Proscenium theatre
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maximum spectacle
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minimal audience/actor proximity
Black Box is a flexible theatre, capable
of arrangement as
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open theatre (modified proscenium: no
arch)
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thrust stage
-
arena theatre
-
environmental/found space
Proscenium terms:
house (left and right)
stage (up, down, left, and right)
rake
proscenium arch
apron
wings
traps
fly loft
fly rail
main drape
teasers: legs and borders
Scenery terms:
drop
cyclorama
scrim
flat
platform
wagon
Lighting terms:
pipes: batten and tree
instrument
cable
patch panel
dimmer board
General theatre structures:
ghost light
catwalk
sound and light booths
light cage
green room
costume, scene, paint, and properties
shops
storage spaces for costumes/set/props
dressing and makeup rooms
trap room
box office
foyer
Audience (notes from reading)
Varied expectations
Form collective identity
Why is enacted storytelling so popular?
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Vicarious version of child's dramatic
play
-
From psychoanalytic model: Identification,
Mirror stage
Critic
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Informed audience member
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Responsibility to art form, not artists
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Historical, literary, cultural background
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How a director/designers/actors choose
to interpret a play text
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