Notions in Global Theater Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by AishuNed

Defini­tion: in the world of writing, exposition refers to the art of providing essential background inform­ation about the main characters and the world of the story. Literary exposition can help provide emotional stakes throughout the beginning of the story, the rising action, the falling action, and the eventual end. The presen­tation of inform­ation necessary for the audience’s unders­tanding of the dramatic situation and action in the perfor­mance of a play. In tradit­ional dramat­urgy, the exposition is identified with the introd­uctory scenes preceding the rising action. [...] Inform­ation is commonly presented through dialogue, often among minor charac­ters, or between a protag­onist and confidant. Example: If you show your character walking into an old house at the beginning of your story, you can say something like, “It was the first time she'd been back in her childhood home since her grandf­ather's death.”

Mise-e­n-Scène / Stage Directions

Defini­tion: is the arrang­ement of actors and stage design in scenes for a theatre or film produc­tion, both in visual arts through storyb­oar­ding, visual theme, and cinema­tog­raphy, and in narrative storyt­elling through direction. Example: 'The man deals a deck of cards' or 'Katy enters the room' are examples of stage direct­ions. They describe the movements of the characters in the scene. Furthe­rmore, setting descri­ption such as 'the morning sunlight fills the room' is also an example of stage direction.

Defini­tion: vivid descri­ption; using details to place an object, person, or event before the listeners' eyes. Example: a painting of a sculpture: the painting is "­telling the story of" the sculpture, and so becoming a storyt­eller, as well as a story. Usage: this is a novel, though not always succes­sfully, saturated in ekphrasis. Side note: as the word ekphrasis represents a literary response to art, there seems not to be a word, or phrase, assigned to the art of creating a visual response to a piece of writing other than illust­ration, or “ekphrasis in reverse.”

Defini­tion: the result of an effort which is made to create an idealized and heroic image of a leader by a govern­ment, often through unques­tioning flattery and praise. Example: Ferdinand Marcos developed a cult of person­ality as a way of remaining President of the Philip­pines for 20 years, in a way that political scientists have compared to other author­itarian and totali­tarian leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Usage: an extrao­rdinary cult of person­ality had been created around the leader.

Defini­tion: a rhetorical figure in which the speaker addresses a dead or absent person, or an abstra­ction or inanimate object. Example: "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?­" Juliet believes she is alone and addresses Romeo, thinking that he is absent.

Defini­tion: a public speech or published text in praise of someone or something. Example: a panegyric on the pleasures of malt whisky.

Defini­tion: the point in a play or novel, in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another charac­ter's true identity or the true nature of their own circum­sta­nces; refers to a change in the protag­onist from ignorance to knowledge. Example: we see the tormented figure of Oedipus come to recognize the truth in a classical moment of anagno­risis.

Defini­tion: the purifi­cation or purgation of the emotions (espec­ially pity and fear). Example: at the end of Romeo and Juliet, the two lovers have sought release from their "­cro­sse­d" love by killing themse­lves. The audience experi­ences a catharsis when the two families bury the hatchet.

Defini­tion: a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circum­sta­nces. Example: the death of King Creon's son Haemon at his father's hands after he opposes him.

Defini­tion: literally the "­holder of string­s", the sutradhara is the stage manager and director of Sanskrit drama, though he has been conven­tio­nalized in other traditions in India.

Defini­tion: the rasa signifies the point at which the specta­tors’ expect­ations, the perfor­mers’ skill in enacting the play text, and the actual perfor­mance meet; a drama leaves behind only the rasa or taste - in effect, the memory of the perfor­mance. It connotes a concept in Indian arts about the aesthetic flavour of any visual, literary or musical work that evokes an emotion or feeling in the reader or audience but cannot be described. Example: uniting in bed, they played the game of rasa, enjoying and eating nectar sweet fruit.

Defini­tion: a form of Chinese opera which provided entert­ainment through a synthesis of recita­tions of prose and poetry, dance, singing, and mime, with a certain emphasis on comedy.

Defini­tion: Latin phrase that generally means "one corrects customs by laughing at them," or "he corrects customs by ridicu­le."­ Some commen­tators suggest that the phrase embodies the essence of satire; in other words, the best way to change things is to point out their absurdity and laugh at them.

Defini­tion: the three principles derived by French classi­cists from Aristo­tle's Poetics; they require a play to have a single action repres­ented as occurring in a single place and within the course of a day. These principles were called, respec­tively, unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time.

Defini­tion: the general idea of what is proper, fitting, moral etc; the quality or act of being decent. Example: she conducted herself with propriety.

Defini­tion: alexan­drine - a verse or line of poetry of twelve syllables; hemistichs - a half-line of verse, either standing as an unfinished line for dramatic or other emphasis, or forming half of a complete line divided by a caesura; caesura - a stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctu­ation or by a gramma­tical boundary, such as a phrase or clause - it is generally it is not marked at all – it's simply part of the way the reader or singer pronounces the line.