III- the literary arts

CHAPTER 6
THE THEATER
1. THE DRAMA
- The drama, in one form or the other, has
always been with us. It reached its zenith in
periclean Greece where, during the feast of
Dionysus, the legendary heroes were
presented as under going the cycle from
renown to adversity after they attain
“hubris” or alienation from the gods, largely
through their arrogance which the gods
could not forgive. Greek drama was
absorbed into the theatre of Rome and given
a distinctly Roman flavor, although the
originality of the Roman theater was minimal.
 Although there are close to twenty
different drama forms extant today, they
are still generally classed under two
distinct forms: the tragedy and the
comedy. For purpose of simplification,
therefore, let us consider the general
points is the study of these two major
forms. Central to the study of the tragedy
is the analysis of the tragic hero. This
term has undergone a steady development
to such an extent that the classical idea
need not apply to all tragedies, especially
the modern species.
Perhaps we should clarify the meaning of
tragedy. Webster dictionary defines
tragedy; ” a literary work, especially the
modern species a serious play having an
unhappy or disastrous ending brought
about ultimately by fate , moral
weakness in a character, social pressures,
etc. .” the last part of that definition ,
that is, the source of tragedy, spells the
differences in the tragic heroes of the
different varieties of tragedy.
1. The classic Hero
-is the one who is found in most Greek
tragedies . He possessed certain tragic
catastrophe. Let us examine these
qualities .
a) The classic hero possessed a nobility of
character and a high social state.
b) He must posses a flaw, what the
ancients called the “tragic fault”
because the tragedy sprang from it.
Aristotle in his “poetics” was quite explicit
about the nature of this flaw. He stipulated
that the fault should be “an error or
judgment”, not a vice or depravity .this idea
is very important in the study of the classic
hero because it is in the presence of this
tragic flaw that the element of Katharsis,
which we shall discuss later, depends.
3. Because the nobility of the heroe’s
character and the fact that the tragic fault
is minor, although irresistible and therefore
catastrophic, the hero gets a punishment
which is more than what he deserves.
• in most of the classical tragedies,
therefore, the source of the tragedy is
not so much a moral weakness of the
hero but the machination of fate
through the mechanics of the Gods.
2. The modern hero- is an ordinary man,
engrossed in some problem which calls
for the full strength of his powers. He
may be defeated by a weakness of his
characters or in his attitudes or by the
pressures of the society with which he
has to contend.
There is nothing spectacular in the
modern tragic hero. But there is dignity
in his capacity to fight against the odds.
Therefore, this humble ordinary man is
also a hero. The tragedy here springs no
longer from the struggle between man
and fate, but from internal forces-
weakness within the protagonist-or from
social causes. The modern hero is,
therefore, seen not only as an individual
working out an individual problem but also
as a social being enmeshed in the social
forces that surround us in our time.
Two factors must be present in the
audience before Katharsis may be achieved:

1. Admiration for the hero and

2. Ability to identify with him.
Without the feeling of admiration, there can
be no desire for identification. When we
view the fortunes of a man whose qualities
inspire administration and whose frailty
makes possible identification with ourselves,
we are transported out of ourselves and we
undergo what he undergoes.
 In the study of comedy, we concentrate
on the uses of wit and humor:
Humor- arises from ludicrous situations
and characters.
Wit- arises from repartee– the give and
take of conversation. Deeper than
humor, but a good comedy should use
both.
 “slapstick comedy”
-worst kind of comedy where the plot is
thin, the dialogue is banal, and the
situations unnatural and forced. The best
kind of comedy combines wit and humor
and has an undercurrent of pathos. The
comedies of Moliere are perfect examples
of this.
3. How important ‘is the written text to
the appreciation of a staged play?
• To be sure a knowledge of the text
employed by the actors is vital to the
comprehension of what is being created on
the stage.
• The literary value of the written script
may contribute to the overall merit of play,
but the production on the stage depends on
the elements besides.
4. The actor- is the chief medium of the
director in the presentation of a play.
Acting is an art where a person brings
himself , his body and his voice, his
imagination and his techniques to become
the medium of the directors imagination.
These have been classified as;
a) the theatrical person, his personality as it
affects the audience across the footlights.
b) His natural assets, for instance, great
beauty of presence, effective body in
shape and flexibility.
c. A sense of rhythm, an instinct for pauses
and cues
d. A sense of movement and line: that is, a
sense of the flow and line of gesture and
movement. This includes the ability to
wear costumes well, and
e. A strong mimetic gift, for acting is
essentially based on the actions of men in
their daily lives.
 Requirements of good character:

• Should not be an elocutionists

• Acting is not mere imitation
• Must have imagination
Qualities of a good actor:
• Imagination
• A fluent emotional nature
• An expressive voice
• A mobility of inner constitution
5. The types Acting- we usually distinguish
two schools of thought regarding the
effective of acting. These are the
subjective school started as early as the
first century Quintilian. He declared that
an actor moves others with his performance
only when he is himself moved; in other
words, to make others weep or laugh, he
himself must also weep and laugh. This
school calls for self-involvement in the role,
that the actor forget his identity and
become completely the role that he is
playing.
On the other hand, in the eighteenth
century The Frenchman Diderot wrote
“Paradoxe sur de comedien” where he
stated that, in the interest of his art, an
actor should gain self-mastery and ability
to be objective regarding the feelings he
is to present. This meant that the actor
was to approach his role with a cool mind,
analyzing the aspects of the role, and
studying the possible effects he can
create and how these may be created.
Then, he proceeds to build a synthesis of
the emotions he wishes to create and uses
the best devices to do so, not at any
moment getting “carried away” by the role
to such an extent that there is a
subjective involvement in it.
Stark Young says: “there could be no way of
settling this time worn argument. One man
can experience an emotion repeatedly with
more readiness that another; one has less
need than another to feel the emotion at
the moment in order to act it.
There is another point also. Granted that an
acting form has been found that will
express the emotion and that the actor
repeats when he wishes to express again
that emotion, The fact remains that one
actor may be more affected by the thing
he does than another.”
Like all artists, actors vary in their
approaches. The fundamental principle
here is that actor, by means of his
technique, be able to establish a firm
outline which separates his creation from
reality and heightens it into art.
The approach is not as important as the ability to
give form to an experience in a way that the
experience becomes perceptible to the
audience.
6. The director- stands behind every theatrical
production. In French, he is called
the”regisseur”- which means that he regiments
and underwrites everything that happens on
stage. Of course, everybody else who is
concerned with production brings his particular
talents to bear upon the endeavor- actors,
designers, customers, etc._ but the artistic
sense of director determines the achieved
content of the whole production.
 We classify directors into two types:
1. The traditional director- translates as
possible the idea of the text upon the
stage. Through his endeavor the
experience created by the playwright is
recreated.
2. The Virtuoso director- is not a concern to
give the audience recreation of the authors
idea as his own. He does not create the
authors drama or develop the authors idea:
instead, he employs the main lines of the
play to express and develop a play of his
own
In fact, in all inspired directing there is
always some amount of virtuosity.
However, too much virtuosity may so
dislocate the logic of the play that it is
no longer recognizable or acceptable as
such. Hence, it is considered sound
theatre practice to follow the authors
mean intention and to let the directors
virtuosity be exercised in the avenues
of his approaches to this intention.
7. The principle of theatrical balance:
- directors vary in the manner in which
they use their actors. There are those
who give the actors the entire business,
telling them how to do every part of
their roles, even the gestures and tone
of their voices. He hold their
interpretations in his hands and
regulates the entire productions. Very
few directors do this on the professional
stage on the other extreme, there are
directors who let their actors alone.
This has some advantages. For one nothing,
by allowing the actor free rein in the
interpretation of his role, a certain
freshness of insight is attained. This, of
course, largely depends on the quality of
the actor. If the actor is good, the result
may be excellent. But good consistent
acting is hard to come by, and actors moods
are quite erratic. For the sake of the
integrity of the play, the director must
exercise a controlling hand on the entire
production. This insures its integrity and
its unity.
8. The avenues of theatre- the theatrical
art has many ways of reaching the
audience, and not one of these may be
considered more important than the rest.
We may state these in three ways : the
words, which are the symbols of the
objectified; the avenue of the ear through
rhythm- this includes tone and tempo; and
the visual- what speaks to the eyes
depends upon the nature of the idea which
the theatrical presentations aims to
express; the impact of each, in turn, would
depend on upon each man who receive it.
We all know the function of words: to
express ideas and to arouse
associations. If the purpose of every
art is to arouse in the audience the
experience which the artist attempts to
recreate, then the purpose of every
word is to capture the freshness of
every aspect of the experience. But no
one should make the mistake of thinking
that in the theatre, the most important
feature is the dialogue.
The meaning of the words may change with
a simple distance that the actor places
between its word. An actor may state:
“this is wonderful”, in a variety of
rhythms and give each utterance a new
meaning. ”the gradations and values of
sound in the theatre are in their way as
infinite and inexhaustible as music is.”
Music and language may arouse certain
responses, but it is what is scene on
stage that gives theatre its reality, its
hold upon the audience’s attention.
 Setting and costumes alone cannot make a
play succeed if the script is bad and the
acting, poor. There are the avenues through
which the theatre enters into the audience.
In its own way each contributes to the
range and scope of the sensuous and
aesthetic inclusiveness of a theatrical
production.
2. The movies- time was when the movies were not
considered “art”; at most, they were called “the step-
child of the arts”. But today the opinion regarding this
medium has changed considerably Erwin Panofsky says:
“Today there is no denying that narrative films are not
only “art”-not often good art, to be sure, but this applies
to other media as well . The “movies” have re-established
that dynamic contact between art production and art
consumption which, for reasons too complex to be
considered, here, is sorely attenuated, if not entirely
interrupted, in many fields of artistic endeavor. Whether
we like it or not, it is the movies that mold, more than any
other single force, the opinions, the taste, the language,
the dress, the behavior, and even the physical appearance
of a public comprising more than 60% of the populations
of the earth.”
The aesthetic possibilities of the movies are
inevitably tied up with those of drama.
There are two aesthetic possibilities : the
dynamization of space and the
spatialization of time.
1. The dynamization of space- In the
theatre, the spectator occupies the same
seat throughout the performance and,
therefore, views the whole play from only
one angle. Space is static and the spatial
relation between the spectator and what
he sees on the stage is fixed.
The spectator identifies his eyes with the cameras
lens and therefore continually shifts in distance
and directions. Aesthetically, therefore, the space
presented to him is movable; it approaches,
recedes, revolves, turns, crystallizes as it is
controlled by the focusing of the camera. This
actually opens up a whole field of possibilities
unknown to the stage: the violent shifting of scene
from place to place by means of a car negotiating
dangerous traffic or a motorboat approaching a
harbor, the participation of disembodied spirits in
action, as in “The Thin man” series, the
presentation of details too microscopic for the
naked eye to catch, the close-ups of delicate
surgical operations, etc.
These features are most effective in creating suspense and
in awakening emotions. A movie like “blow-up” cannot
ever be presented on the stage.
2. The spatialization of time- the movies have the power
entirely denied to the stage of being able to convey
psychological experiences by directly producing these on
the screen. Time is thereby given and added, more
palpable dimension. It cease to exist only in the mind.
Devices like this lend space to time which otherwise can
be suggested only through dialogue; in which case, the
audience is bored by a long-drawn out description. On
the stage there are changes of sets to convey the change
of time. But these are never done in a continuous,
evolutionary process as can be done in the movies.
3. The Close-ups- what do they achieve? Every movie has
its share of close-ups, when the face of a character is
blown-up and the attention of the audience is irresistibly
drawn to the face alone. This is usually done when the
monological or dialogical element assumes vital
importance.
what does the close-ups achieve? By magnifying the face
of a character, the movies transform this face into a field
of action where the psychological forces struggling in the
person are given full play. In the movies, the feelings and
thought are dramatized for a spectator by focusing
attention on the face, sometimes suspending dialogue for
a few moments. in this manner, the meaning of the
spoken word is deepened and enriched by the co-
expressibility of the action in the face.
4. The Significance of the Movies. As was
previously said, the movies shape the public
opinion of more than 60% of the populations
of the earth. The first requirements of the
movie is communicability. The movies can
either educate or pervert the public.
Contrary to most people’s view that the
movies, being commercial should therefore,
cater to the taste of the “public”, the few
excellent films made did find a great
response from this same public. It is
obvious that the public does not reject a
good product when this is given to them.
In the modern world, the movies perform the
function of other forms of art in the past.
The movies are no longer a luxury but a
necessity. As such, it is a part of the average
man’s education and life. Hence, the great
role that the movies play in directing the
sensibilities of the public.
Those who produce movies should not, abdicate
the mission that this fact has imposed on
them. The movies should be made, not with an
eye on the box-office all the time, but with
an eye on more discernment of the needs of
the human being.
 The public experts the realities to be
palpably presented to them. This, the
movies should do, with a minimum of
stylization . Stylized presentation should
be regarded as exciting experiments, no
more; the movies must remain a realistic
presentation of the physical realities in
order to fulfill its realistic in order to
fulfill its present mission of shaping the
public opinions.