Which is an example of stereophonically located sound design?
an airplane flying overhead from left to right
The development of _____ fostered the great period of scenery design.
the artificially illuminated indoor theatre
A plan or series of plans showing the placement of each lighting instrument—its type, wattage, size, wiring and connection to a dimmer, and color is called
a light plot
The ancient and original use of costume was to
separate the actor from the audience
What profiled designer created sets for The Book of Mormon, The Coast of Utopia, and The Pillowman?
Scott Pack
Realistic costuming took over when which of the following became a major guiding principle in drama?
historical accuracy
What kind of scenery attempts to depict, in great detail, a specific time and place in the observable world where the play's events are presumed to take place?
realistic
The picture frame stage reached its highest realization in the
baroque period
Which invention brought lighting to the stage in its modern form and made lighting a more controlled part of the drama?
gaslight
The type of set that fostered a uniquely architectural theory of theatre was
the theatre of the fourth wall removed
Which of the following is true of the history of lighting in scene design?
Even before the advent of electricity, designers attempted to manipulate lighting with candles, oil lamps, and reflective surfaces.
Which kind of stage consists of a bare room able to adapt to a variety of staging possibilities?
black box
Which of the following types of stage is completely surrounded by audience?
arena
During performances, the person fully in charge of overseeing the execution of the show is the
production stage manager
The theatricalist use of lighting in Brecht's didactic theatre calls for
the lighting instruments being exposed and placed in full view of the audience
The order and process of developing a design for a play could be summarized by the following steps:
reading the play, researching, imagining, creating a physical presentation, collaborating, approving for the budget, ensuring viability, implementing
Turntables, elevators, hoists, cranes, rolling carts, and wagons, which are all used as scenic elements to accompany and support the dramatic action, are collectively called
stage machinery
What kind of scenery uses evocative visual images to make a visual statement about the production's intended mood or theme?
metaphorical
Which person is responsible for the building and operation of stage machinery and scenery; scheduling lighting and industrial crews; moving scenery in and out of the theatre; and establishing policies and directives for scene shifting?
technical director
Makeup, like costuming, is
both ceremonial and illustrative.
Which of the following is NOT a postmodern design element?
furniture taken directly from people's homes
The audience's demand for internal consistency in a play, in which the characters, the situation, and the theatrical context are combined to generate the action, creates credibility.
True
Which of the following is true of playwriting in bygone days?
Playwriting was considered so technically demanding a craft that playwrights spent long in-house apprenticeships as "company men," learning their skills through continual exposure in theatrical rehearsal and performance
The playwright works with two fundamental tools
dialogue and physical action
A screenwriter, as well as a playwright, Neil LaBute's contribution to today's theatre is a return to highly romantic dialogue, at times written in poetic verse.
Falso
When a playwright has managed to make every scene, incident, character, and word deliver an impact, he or she has satisfied the dramatic demand for
intensity
A play in which events are connected to each other in strict, chronological, cause-effect continuity, and in which dramatic experience attempts to convey a lifelike progression of experience through time, is classified as
continuous in structure and linear in chronology
A play that deals with an issue of serious and lasting significance in humanity's spiritual or intellectual life beyond the mere attempt to imitate profundity is said to possess
gravity
One difference between the playwright in Shakespeare's time and the contemporary playwright is that
the playwright no longer functions as a director but is now considered an independent artist
Which of the following is the most accurate statement of the audience's response to the drama?
Intrigue draws us into the world of the play; credibility keeps us there
After what era did the image of the playwright move from that of theatrical co-worker to that of the isolated observer and social critic?
romanticism
The plays of Tony Kushner look at the hidden violence that can lie beneath seemingly stable human relationships, as in Bash, which is set within the context of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
False
Which New York-born, Louisiana-raised, playwright (b. 1956) wrote a masterpiece of modern drama, Angels in America, which deals with the AIDS crisis, sexuality, gender, and politics?
Tony Kushner
What aspects of the play do not need to be written at all?
a character's improvisational behavior
Which playwright has branched out into writing librettos and adaptations of musicals for shows such as Aida and Tarzan?
David Henry Hwang
The playwright's skill at condensing a story that may spans many days or years of chronological time into a theatrical time frame is called
compression
James Barrie's fantastical play Peter Pan deals with characters that are wholly appropriate to their imaginary situation and internally consistent in their actions within the context of the play. Since it may be said to make a picture of a wholly consistent world, this play possesses
credibility.
Which playwright demonstrates a commitment to issues global human rights, as shown in Ruined?
Lynn Nottage
Scenes of forced conflict are important because
climactic scenes define a play's structure.
The quality of a play that describes the way the playwright creates a world in which every detail fortifies our insight into the play is called richness.
True
This playwright speaks of "two selves, the public and private self, the worlds that people juggle a lot of time just from being out there in the world," and whose works, such as Wrecks, reflect this statement.
Neil LaBute
A linear plot proceeds by
the point-to-point storytelling of events linked in chronological, cause-effect continuity
All of the following are signs of good characterization EXCEPT
the character appears as a pawn in the playwright's grand design and exists only to symbolize something
An independence of thought and vision is perhaps the playwright's most important characteristic.
True
The quality of a play that creates suspense by making us wonder what will happen next is called curiosity.
False
A play in which every character possesses an independence of intention and expression, and whose motivation appears sensible in the light of our general knowledge of psychology and human behavior, possesses
depth of characterization
The quality of a play that refers to a continual stream of information is called progression.
False
A play that relates in some fashion to the current personal concerns of the audience is said to possess gravity.
False
The term "playwright" refers to
a person who constructs and composes a play as a wheelwright makes a wheel
The quality of stage dialogue that makes it achieve maximum impact when spoken and which requires the playwright to be attentive to the audial shape of language, including the meaning of the dialogue and the rhythm of sound, is called stageability.
False
All of the following could be considered contributors to an interesting audible shape to dialogue EXCEPT
well structured grammar.
Whose plays are noted for intensely realistic writing and almost musical, rhythmic dialogue?
David Mamet
Which quality of character began in realism and grew to become the dominant aspect of the theatrical experience by the mid-twentieth century, most notably in the plays of Chekov, Williams, and Miller?
the psychological dimension of character
In classical times, what physical and symbolic element separated the actors from the audience?
The actors wore masks.
Play" and "performance" are interchangeable terms
F
Which mode of performance acknowledges the audience—as in the case of the nightclub performer who sings, dances, jokes, and responds overtly to applause?
the presentational mode
While both theatre and sport are public spectacles, theatre differs from sports activities because:
theatre has a pre-ordained ending
What is plagiarism?
when a student misrepresents the work of another as his or her own
You can earn extra credit in this class by attending additional plays and writing a report on them.
T
Our outcomes and objectives for this class come from San Francisco State's learning outcomes for GE, and from the National Association of Schools of Theater's standards
T
Class requirements include seeing how many live plays?
2
The distinctive feature of theatre, which separates it from other arts, is that theatre employs:
impersonation
How does a theatrical performance differ from a video or a filmed performance?
The theatrical performance is live, with the audience and performers, who are aware of each other and mutually interact in their shared presence
Live performance is a term that encompasses theatre, film, television and new media.
F
Which of the following is true of the relationship between the play script and the performance?
The script is a silhouette or outline of the play itself, which fully exists in performance only.
Drama comes from the Greek dran, which means
to do
The English word for person comes from the Latin word for:
mask
Performance is a strictly theatrical phenomenon
False
Online classes are easier than face-to-face classes.
F
Theatre signifies all the following EXCEPT:
the stage and backstage spaces.
Theatre is an art because it:
structures meaning without providing dogma
What is our class using as the formal definition of "theatre?":
That body of artistic work in which actors portray characters in a live performance of a scripted play
Theatre comes from theatron, which means:
seeing place
The agreement between the audience and the actor, which includes a whole set of tacit understandings that form the context of playwatching, is called:
convention
The final scene, action, or lines in a play devoted to bringing the play to a new level of harmony or understanding, perhaps even resolution, after the climax is called the
denouement
The six components of a play which Aristotle lists, in order of importance, are:
plot, character, theme, diction, music, and spectacle
In play construction, the single action that initiates the major conflict of the play is called the
inciting incident
According to Aristotle, it is impossible to break down the elements that make tragedy effective.
False
In a Greek play, the lead character that moves the action forward is opposed by a figure called the antagonist.
T
The major organization for theatre companies in San Francisco is called:
Theatre Bay Area
A play that dramatizes the key events in the life of a king or head of state, such as Shakespeare's Henry IV, is called:
a history play
Which one of the following is part of the time-based horizontal axis of dramaturgy?
pre-play
The purging or cleansing of the audience's pity and terror at the climax of a tragedy is called:
catharsis.
The audience is NOT a part of the definition of conventions of the theatre.
False
Background information, presented within the play that the audience must possess in order to understand the action of the play is called:
exposition
Which element describes the play's use of rhythm and sounds, either by way of instrumental composition or the orchestration of such noises as muffled drumbeats, gunshots, special effects, and vocal tones?
music
What is the difference between plot and story?
Plot refers to the structure of events; story refers to a narrative of what happens in a play
Comedies that use a more bleak humor in dealing with serious themes are known as
dark comedies
The Greek term for the "carrier of the action" in a tragedy is:
Protagonist
Which of the following is true about the differences between tragedy and comedy?
Tragedy typically deals with great people, whereas comedy deals with ordinary people
The visual aspect of the play, including the scenery, costumes, lighting, make-up, and the over-all look of the stage are included in the element known as
spectacle
Processions and the Ancient Greek proagon are two examples of ways in which theatre artists publicized their plays in ages past.
True
Which element of drama refers not only to the pronunciation of spoken dialogue but also to the literary nature of the play's text, including its tone, imagery, articulation, and use of such literary forms as verse, rhyme, metaphor, jest, apostrophe, and epigram?
diction
In Western drama, a full-length play has historically been designated as one that:
lasts two to three hours, typically.
Aristotle's term for the play's abstracted intellectual content is "thesis.
False
Genre means category or kind.
True
In Greek tragedy, the central character
undergoes a change that leads to his or her demise
Which of the following does the director NOT typically look for in an audition?
Actor's personal experiences paralleling those of the character
What description best characterizes our current relationship to virtuosity?
It is making a comeback since the heyday of the Method in the mid-twentieth century.
Konstantin Stanislavsky, founder of the Moscow Art Theatre (1898), said "You must live the life of your character on stage." Which style of acting does this statement describe most closely?
the representational mode of acting
the representational mode of acting
is largely diminished, with Stanislavsky and classical techniques both emphasized
Why did the Greek actor Polus, when playing the role of Electra, bring the ashes of his dead son onstage with him?
He wanted to cry real tears lamenting the "death" of his character's brother
What is "The Method?
an American acting style derived from the Russian actor-director Konstantin Stanislavsky's self-proclaimed system
Which faculty keeps the actor within established bounds and at the same time ensures artistic agility?
discipline
The actor's instrument is his or her
self
The type of performing that asks the actor to enter the mind of the character being played is
representational acting
Actors who studies human behaviors from a broad range of historical periods, countries, and social classes, so as to apply them when creating characters from a variety of dramatic styles, demonstrates a technique of the _________ mode of acting.
presentational
The dual meanings of this word explain both its physical, common definition and its more religious meaning, "spirit stimulus.
inspiration
The three main elements of the actor's approach are goals, tactics, and
researching the style of the play and mode of performance
Which two writers best exemplify the range of difference between external and internal approaches to assuming a character?
Diderot and Stanislavsky
Directed stage actions that are precisely scripted physical behaviors worked out in blocking are called
stage business.
The term "subtext" refers to
a character's unspoken and undescribed goals.
What alternate meaning of "presence" explains the power of the actor beyond virtuosity?
the projection of an aura of magic and the divine
The term mimesis means
mimicry.
What are the two fundamental notions of acting?
representational and presentational
In his first published work, Stanislavsky states that the "prime task" of the actors is to "create the
inner life of the character
Most auditions consist of performing
one- or two-minute monologues from plays or short narrative cuttings from novels, stories, or poems which display a contrast
George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, is generally regarded as the first modern director.
True
The director spends most of her time doing which of the following tasks?
coaching the actors
Which of the following directors founded the Théâtre d'Art in Paris in 1890 as a direct assault upon the realist principles espoused by André Antoine?
Paul Fort
Paul Fort
True
Which statement best describes the end of the director's involvement with the play?Select one:
The director may still change aspects of the play during previews or the run, but primarily has given over responsibility to the audience
A great directorial concept has the qualities of being generalized, well-established by tradition, intellectually relaxing, designer-oriented, and readily apparent
False
The initial shows where a director can evaluate the production in terms of audience response and institute new changes are known as
previews
Which person is responsible for the financial support of the production and, working closely with the director, also contributes to many "directorial" decisions in the production process?
producer
The ancient Greek word for director is
didaskalos, meaning "teacher.
Which of the following INCORRECTLY pairs a director with his or her previous profession?
Mike Nichols: lighting designer
As a response against Stanislavsky's realism, the director Vsevolod Meyerhold evolved a theatre of "biomechanical constructivism" in Moscow.
True
Which of the following tasks belong to the director?
conceptualizing the play and giving it vision and purpose
Which of the following was one of several directors who not only fostered the development of realist and naturalist dramas but who also opened up the theatre to possibilities of psychological interpretation?
Harley Granville-Barker
Harley Granville-Baker, in his essay "The Art of the Theatre" (1905), compares the director of a play to a captain of a ship in the following lines: "Until discipline is understood in a theater to be willing and reliant obedience to the manager [director] or captain, no supreme achievement can be accomplished.
False
Which of the following is a full and correct citation of a web site in MLA style?
Altonn, Helen. "Marine Team Sounds Alarm for Reefs." StarBulletin.com. Star Bulletin, 29 Aug. 2008. Web. 17 June 2009.
A tagline is a single statement that can serve as an informal subtitle to the play, stating the core concept of the director.
True
Small-scale movement on the stage, which an actor performs within the larger pattern of entrances and exits, is called
business.
Which type of rehearsal occurs near the end of the rehearsal process, as the play comes closer to production time but before the actors apply makeup?
technical
The "core concept" is
the director's determination of the most important of the many images, ideas, and emotions that will give the production meaning.
The rhythm of a production, sometimes confused with the speed of the actor's delivery, is called
pace
What does a director NOT seek in a designer-director collaboration?
financial independence
Which of the following is a potential theme, using Aristotles' definition of that term?
To thine own self be true
What is meant by the "concept" of a play?
the director's central idea which focuses his or her interpretation
Which of the following require a citation in an academic paper, essay or answer?
All of the above are correct
Which of the following is NOT one of the goals of staging?
to renew interest in the classics
How did the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries' emphasis on rationalism influence the director's role?
The demand for historical accuracy required the director to conduct comprehensive research, organization, and coordination.
What determines the pace of a play?
the quality and quantity of information conveyed to the audience
A director should possess all of the following EXCEPT
a capable voice and an athletic physique, both which comprise the actor's instrument
What is the director's primary responsibility?
to envision the main lines of the production and provide the artistic leadership to realize that vision
André Antoine is primarily known as a ______ director.
naturalist
A producer may be an individual, such as an artistic director, or a partnership of individuals, such as a committee.
True
Which of the following is true of stylizing directors?
They are unrestrained by rigid formulas with respect to verisimilitude or realistic behavior
Which of the following is NOT included in the conceptualization of a play?
the social history of the playwright
Which of the following is true of the history of the director's role?
There has always been a director but not always an individual specifically charged with that role.
The director's work with the designers is generally suggestive and corrective, rather than overtly controlling.
True
The directing process encompasses the two phases of preparation and implementation.
True
The timing and placement of a character's entrances, exits, crosses, embraces, and other major movements is called
blocking
The role of teacher-director reached its historical pinnacle of influence, albeit anonymously, during the Renaissance and early Restoration periods.
False
Gregory Doran was both the stage and television director of the production we saw of Hamlet.
True