Drama

A play for theatre, radio, or television

"A gritty urban drama about growing up in Harlem."


• mass noun: plays as a genre or style of literature
  
  
  "A Renaissance drama."
  
  
• mass noun : the activity of acting
  
  
  "teachers who use drama are working in partnership with pupils as modifier drama school."

The term drama, as defined by Oxford Dictionary (2013) is a 'play' or 'the activity of acting' that falls under the style of literature. Originated from classical Greek term, significantly defined as 'action' and derived from the verb draō which means 'to do' or 'to act'. In theatre, the exertion of drama consists of the act of performing by actors on stage before an audience. Drama significantly influenced by collaborative production and collective reception. Thus drama, or a dramatic narrative differs from other form of written literature as Pfister and Jahn (2003) explains;

• the actors work together with producers, directors, designers, choreographers, musicians etc (collaborative modes of production)
• the performance is to an audience (collective form of reception)

Modern days drama, especially television and film ignored these two important features of a drama due to the nature of the production; being recorded instead of seen live in play/action and propose a set of disadvantages unlike the older day theatre production.

Pfister added that “the collective aspect actually increase the intensity of the reception. If you read the printed literary text of a comic scene on our own, we are generally less inclined to laugh than when we experience it with others in the theatre” and “the feedback from the audience to the stage, improving the actor’s performance, stimulating improvisation, and more."

Originally, traditional drama represents two generic division of a comedy and tragedy. These two division are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses; Thalia and Melpomene. Now in comprehension, the term Thalia symbolizes a laughing face (the Muse of comedy), while Melpomene the weeping face (the Muse of tragedy). Generally, these two forms are considered as a genre of a poetry contradictly differ from the epic and lyrical modes since Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BCE).

History

Historically, drama development in the Western civilization plays a significant role in the modern world. Western drama originated from the classical Greece as the city-state of Athens within the formation of it's theatrical culture produced three genres of what we known now as tragedy, comedy and satyr. During those days, there were competitions held as a part of festival which celebrating the god, Dionysus which considered as the commencement of the theatre/drama origin. There are several significant type of Western drama existed throughout the history such as;

• Classical Greek
• Classical Roman
• Medieval
• Elizabethan
• Jacobean
• Modern & Postmodern

Function

To understand its function, one must familiarize theirselves with several prominent aspects of drama. It includes character, plot and theme alongside the inclusion of major and minor characters. Plot, fundamentally constructed and made up of acts and scenes, as classical perspective suggested, according to Aristotle “a plot must have, a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the events of the plot must causally relate to one another as being either necessary or probable.” (Poetics 23.1459a.)

Theme on the other hand can be considered as the soul of the play, proposed by conflict within any construction of a play; it may be among individuals, man to society, man to supreme power or a man to his inner self. Plot and drama thus, works accordingly together and must be in sync.

Reflections

To most, drama and theatre have some prominent fixed features, conforming to the director's perception of how he/she wanted the play to work. These features are sometimes predictable as it may be foreshadowed by any of the acts/dialogues by the any characters within the play. However, a drama/theatre may contains an unpredictable scenes or acts proposing a sense of suspense, shocking or even intriguing affects to the audience perfectly shaping some kind of moods defining a great play. Here is an interesting video in concluding a perfect situation of how a drama/theatre could perfectly merge different kind of situational effects, and what does it capable of from the perspective of the audience.