Grade 11
Unit 7
LANGUAGE ARTS 1107
AMERICAN DRAMA
CONTENTS
I.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMA
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2
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2
Drama in America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4
THE ART OF DRAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11
Definition of Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11
Purpose of Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12
Elements of Drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13
Structure of a Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
Comprehension by Reading a Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17
WILDER’S OUR TOWN
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22
Thornton Wilder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
22
Our Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
24
GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
36
Brief History of Drama
II.
III.
Authors:
Editor:
Illustrator:
Alice B. Robertson
Helen Robertson Prewitt, M.A.Ed.
Alan Christopherson, M.S.
Alpha Omega Graphics
804 N. 2nd Ave. E., Rock Rapids, IA 51246-1759
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AMERICAN DRAMA
Drama in America was slow in developing. In the colonial period drama was almost nonexistent. Today
drama flourishes in many different forms. How was this development accomplished?
In this LIFEPAC® you will learn more about the development of American drama. First, you will
review briefly the history of drama; then, you will study the five historical periods of development. The
second section will explain what drama is and what elements comprise it. You will learn the general
structure of a play and the proper way to read a play.
In the third section you will learn a little about Thornton Wilder and read his play, Our Town, applying
the information and techniques you have learned.
OBJECTIVES
Read these objectives. The objectives tell you what you will be able to do when you have successfully completed this LIFEPAC.
When you have finished this LIFEPAC, you should be able to:
1.
Explain the early history of drama.
2.
Trace the development of drama in America.
3.
Define drama.
4.
Identify and explain the elements of drama.
5.
Explain the general structure of a play.
6.
Describe how to read a play.
7.
Relate facts about Thornton Wilder.
8.
Describe certain elements of drama in Our Town.
9.
Identify certain dramatic devices and techniques used in Our Town.
10.
Explain particular events or actions in Our Town.
11.
Describe the various functions of the Stage Manager in Our Town.
12.
Explain the conflicts and the theme expressed in Our Town.
13.
Explain the universal appeal of Our Town.
Survey the LIFEPAC. Ask yourself some questions about this study. Write your questions here.
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1
I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMA
The history of drama is quite interesting. Drama has long been used to express man’s experiences, feelings, and thoughts. In this section you will briefly review the early history of drama. The development of
drama in America will be emphasized. You will study its beginnings in the colonial period, follow its advances
in the period after the Revolution, notice the setbacks in the period between 1865 and 1914, discover the
birth of the “new drama” in the twentieth century, and become acquainted with almost unlimited kinds of
drama and methods of presentation in the theater today.
SECTION OBJECTIVES
Review these objectives. When you have completed this section, you should be able to:
1.
Explain the early history of drama.
2.
Trace the development of drama in America.
VOCABULARY
Study these words to enhance your learning success in this section.
play
vernacular
Note: All vocabulary words in this LIFEPAC appear in boldface print the first time they are used. If you are unsure of the
meaning when you are reading, study the definitions given.
Greek Drama
BRIEF HISTORY OF DRAMA
Drama is one of the oldest forms of literature; and, though its prehistoric origins have
been lost to us, early drama probably grew out of primitive religious rites. The earliest
written records of drama come from ancient Greece in the fifth century B.C., where actors
performing in large open air amphitheaters presented plays based on the Greeks’ pagan
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religions. All the actors were men wearing masks to represent various characters they portrayed. Although both tragedy and comedy were produced, only a few of the tragedies have
survived to be studied today.
The Roman drama that succeeded Greek plays three to five centuries later was based
on secular, not religious, attitudes. Many of these plays exist in translation today because
of the great revival of interest in the Roman classics by the scholars of the English
Renaissance.
The church kept drama alive during the Middle Ages in Europe through the presentation of mystery, morality, and miracle plays, which were particularly popular during religious festivals and holidays. These three kinds of drama were religious in nature but dealt
with slightly different subjects. The mystery plays were reenactments of Biblical stories, for
example, the story of Noah or the birth of Christ. Morality plays were, on the other hand,
allegories in which the characters were not individuals, but representations of the virtues
and vices of man (Greed, Envy, Good Deeds, and so on). The miracle play was always based
on the life of one of the saints. These three types of plays, often crude and always simple
because they were directed at an uneducated audience did however, keep alive the tradition of drama in the Western world.
The Renaissance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England saw a great
dramatic revival of the old Greek and Roman classics and a new interest in a native British
drama. English playwrights seized their opportunity to combine the best of these two
drama forms to create the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, the best in English literature
and possibly in the world. Chief among these playwrights was William Shakespeare, the
most respected playwright of all times. The theater of this period was quite popular; and,
though the actors were still all men, the masks had disappeared; and costumes, props, and
sets had taken their place. During the Renaissance the theater did begin to come of age.
Although drama had its ups and downs in the years that followed, it was at last firmly
established as an acceptable and valuable form of literature.
➽
Complete these statements.
1.1
Earliest written records of drama come from __________________________________.
1.2
The earliest drama was probably related to __________________________________.
1.3
Roman drama was more ______________________ in subject and tone.
1.4
By the Middle Ages drama was encouraged by the __________________________________.
1.5
Three types of religious plays include a. _______________________, b. _______________________, and
c. _______________________.
1.6
Drama, in the Renaissance, at last became ___________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________.
➽
Write true or false in the blank.
1.7
_______________ Only men were allowed to act in the Grecian amphitheaters of the fifth century.
1.8
_______________ Many Greek tragedies and comedies have survived to this day.
1.9
_______________ Morality plays were reenactments of Biblical stories.
1.10
_______________ Miracle plays were always based on the lives of saints.
1.11
_______________ Masks had disappeared by Elizabethan times and women were allowed to act.
3
DRAMA IN AMERICA
For various reasons American drama was slow in developing. The history of American
drama may be divided into five periods: the colonial period, the period after the Revolution,
the period between 1865 and 1914, the early twentieth century (1914-1940), and the theater today.
The colonial period. The very strong Puritan influence prevailing in America in colonial times definitely did not favor the development of drama in this country. The Puritans,
who had once managed to close the theaters in England for eighteen years, still regarded
actors and acting as immoral and actually passed laws against public performances in
many of the colonies. Also preventing the growth of early American drama were two factors: a lack of funds to finance theaters and the absence of any established audience to support such a theater. Another factor involved was the old, but still influential, prejudice
regarding the theater as a part of the immoralities of king and court—a rather natural attitude in a young country with no love for any kind of monarchy.
Nevertheless, printed plays were allowed and did find their way into college libraries,
such as those of Harvard and William and Mary. A few theaters arose in the South.
Williamsburg, Virginia, supported a theater by 1716 and Charleston, South Carolina, had
one by 1735. In the eighteenth century, prior to and during the Revolutionary War, some
plays were publicly staged. These productions, however, were based on adaptations of classical or English works: no native drama was written at this time.
The period after the Revolution. After 1783 there was a gradual lessening of prejudice against the theater, and a few scattered companies of actors began performing in the
larger cities. Neither public support nor international copyright laws favored the development of a national drama. The theater did establish itself at this time, however, and began
to build an audience and to develop an increasing number of native American actors, managers, and playwrights.
Scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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These early American plays can be divided into two distinct styles:
1.
2.
The romantic literary style—simply an imitation of foreign or classical historic
drama and
The realistic vernacular style—usually a form of low comedy based on native
American material, and stereotypes.
American drama of the romantic style was written chiefly for entertainment. Popular
subjects included events and people from American history, the Indian, and the stage
“Yankee.’’ The “Yankee” was a popular character type who displayed native American wit by
outsmarting the more sophisticated foreigner.
No play of any real merit was written until George L. Aiken adapted Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the stage in 1852. Not only did he blend both romantic and realistic styles to provide an accurate summary of the taste of the day, but also he
chose for his subject a contemporary issue of the times, slavery. His melodrama contains
something for everyone, for Aiken successfully combined the realistic vernacular of his
lower-class characters with the poetic language of his more noble ones.
The period between 1865 and 1914. This period from the Civil War until just after
the turn of the century was really a time of depression for the American drama. Hundreds
of plays were written and produced but none were worth remembering. These dramas were
the products of an artificial style developed by playwrights who aimed only at commercial
success. Three important trends born near the end of this period, deeply affected the drama
written in this century:
1.
2.
3.
A movement toward realism in the theater,
A desire to deal intelligently with serious problems as the subjects of plays, and
A definite leaning toward symbolism in playwriting.
All three of these trends became more important in the twentieth century as American
drama came of age and took over the world stage.
➽ Complete these activities.
1.12
List four reasons American drama had a slow start.
a. _______________________________________________________________________________________
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________
c.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
d. _______________________________________________________________________________________
1.13
List the two styles of early American plays.
a. _______________________________________________________________________________________
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________
1.14
Explain the literary merit of Aiken’s adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
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1.15
List three trends in American drama which began during the period from 1865 to 1914.
a. _______________________________________________________________________________________
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________
c. _______________________________________________________________________________________
The twentieth century, (1914-1940). Theater, then, had grown along with the nation;
but drama had not. Before this century all the plays produced in America were revivals of
old romantic or classic favorites or new plays just like them. Playwrights, handcuffed by
tradition, were unable to deal with contemporary problems; and thus the plays they wrote
were dramatic entertainment, certainly, but not dramatic literature.
By 1900 Americans had become accustomed to the theater, had developed a body of
competent actors, and had acquired the physical resources to present any kind of play. Two
movements, the revival of dramatic literature in Europe at this time and the growth of the
“little theater” in the United States, also aided the birth of this “new drama.”
The “new drama” produced a great variety of new forms of plays: the problem play, the
naturalistic play, the expressionist play, and the folk drama were a few of the more successful types. Dramatic methods too underwent radical experimentation with the introduction of such techniques as allegory, fantasy, symbolism, and poetry into the structure of
American plays. The new playwrights—Eugene O’Neill, Maxwell Anderson, Elmer Rice,
and others—also experimented with formerly untraditional subjects for their plays, including such ideas as the complexities of human life, the moral and social value of American
life, and the economic and political problems of the modern world.
Eugene O’Neill, the first American playwright of major literary stature, employed startling forms and styles to dramatize his chief concern, which was to illustrate “the eternal
predicament of man struggling for some understanding and some justification of himself in
a universe always mysterious and often seemingly inimical.” Whereas the Christian finds
his answers in the Bible, O’Neill and his contemporaries sought their answers in philosophy and psychology as well as in social and political doctrines. The 1930s was the heyday
for the drama as social criticism in this country with such writers as Clifford Odets and
Lillian Hellman presenting enormously successful plays of this type.
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All of this free experimentation with dramatic forms, styles, and methods produced a
rich and rewarding variety of new plays—romantic tragedy, historical drama, fantastic
comedy, even musical comedy. Three new schools or philosophies of playwriting grew out of
this experimentation; and, though only one survived, all three played, and still play, a large
part in American drama. These schools were realism, symbolism, and expressionism.
Realism, the most predominant movement among the modern playwrights, pictured
ordinary men struggling against the unspectacular and unpleasant problems of everyday
life and succeeding no better than real people do. Realism attempts to present life as it
seems to actually be rather than life as one might wish it to be. The setting of a realistic
play was not used to dazzle or impress the audience, but rather to reflect the ugliness,
meanness, or triviality the realists believed existed in the lives of ordinary people. Such
sets were then, drab, colorless, and often depressing.
Symbolism is a movement in which the writer reveals abstract ideas through the use
of concrete things or people. The symbolists wanted, in their work, to do justice to the beauty and deeper realities they thought existed in mankind underneath surface appearances.
They used symbolic characters and settings to evoke in their audiences feelings that could
not be expressed in literal terms. Though symbolist drama did not last, many of its elements have been incorporated by later playwrights into other kinds of drama. Thornton
Wilder used certain elements of symbolism time and time again in Our Town, a play that
is, in one sense, a symbolic work.
Expressionism is a movement in which the writer distorts external appearances to represent a deeper meaning. The expressionists found value and excitement in modern life by
looking at the internal man. These playwrights portrayed subjective life by presenting
dreams, nightmares, and memories, thus showing their audiences the internal drama of
hopes, fears, and regrets common to all men. This mental drama demanded special staging
techniques and led to the development of many entirely new methods of staging. Special
lighting and exaggerated sound effects were necessary to create the mood and the atmosphere for the play. Devices like scrims (a backdrop curtain that becomes transparent when
lighted from behind) and madly whirling stage platforms are just two examples of the new
techniques that grew out of expressionist drama. Like symbolism, expressionism is no
longer an active theatrical movement; but many of those new techniques are still used
today. (Again, Wilder employed several of these stage devices, including the scrim, in his
play, Our Town).
➽
Write true or false.
1.16
____________ Before the First World War American theater and drama had grown hand-in-hand.
1.17
____________ “New drama” includes any play written since 1944.
1.18
____________ By 1900 “little theater” had appeared in the United States.
1.19
____________ The development of the “new drama” involved both the use of new forms and
experimental techniques.
➽
Complete these statements.
1.20
The first major American playwright of literary merit was __________________________.
1.21
A predominant philosophy used by playwrights to portray the unromantic, trivial aspects of life is
called __________________________.
1.22
A method used to reveal the beauty or truth existing in mankind by letting characters represent
some of these qualities is called __________________________.
1.23
A dramatic movement in which the playwright distorts external appearances to portray deeper
meanings is called __________________________.
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Theater today. After World War II both audiences and the theater changed drastically. There was a definite trend away from social criticism and a turning toward psychological concerns. Even contemporary social issues were being dealt with in private terms by
American playwrights. Reflecting this trend, the theaters themselves grew smaller, more
intimate, in order to present the private or personal kinds of plays being written. Among
these dramatists are William Inge, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller.
Today the kinds of drama available and the methods of presenting them are practically unlimited. In America today there are at least eight different kinds of contemporary theater: (1) Broadway, the large commercial theaters of New York dealing with long-run popular plays; (2) legitimate theater, also large and commercial, but dealing with shorter-run,
lower-budget productions; (3) motion pictures; (4) television; (5) little theaters, small semiprofessional groups in which the writers, producers, and managers are also the actors; (6)
university theater, experimental theaters supported by colleges as workshops for their
drama students; (7) regional theater, medium-sized theaters that often combine the best of
the other types, and (8) repertory theater, individual groups of actors and directors who
present a varied selection of plays.
Obviously, as the theater continues to grow in variety and availability and as leisure
time increases, understanding drama becomes more important than ever. Much variety is
found in American drama today, but much of it is not acceptable to Christians because of
the un-Christian content.
Reading and appreciating selected kinds of drama will both widen your world and help
you understand the people in it. You must always remember that it should be God-honoring in content, however.
➽
Write the letter of the correct answer in the blank.
1.24
_______ colonial drama
a. trend toward psychological concerns
1.25
_______ drama after the Revolution
b. very few theaters existed
1.26
_______ drama between 1865 and 1914
1.27
_______ early twentieth-century drama
e. marked the birth of the new drama
1.28
_______ drama today
f. theater became established
➽
Complete these activities.
1.29
List four modern playwrights.
c. natural amphitheaters were used
d. age of depression for American drama
1.30
a. _________________________
c. _________________________
b. _________________________
d. _________________________
List eight different types of contemporary American theaters.
a. _________________________
e. _________________________
b. _________________________
f. _________________________
c. _________________________
g. _________________________
d. _________________________
h. _________________________
Review the material in this section in preparation for the Self Test. The Self Test will check
your mastery of this particular section. The items missed on this Self Test will indicate specific
areas where restudy is needed for mastery.
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SELF TEST 1
Write the letter of the correct answer in the blank (each answer, 2 points).
1.01
_______ Greek plays
1.02
_______ morality plays
a. led to the use of scrims and whirling stage platforms
b. were performed by men wearing masks
c. started by William Shakespeare
1.03
_______ miracle plays
1.04
_______ Roman plays
1.05
_______ mystery plays
d. a nonrealistic melodrama
e. based on the life of one of the saints
f. a group of actors presenting a variety of plays
g. early secular plays
1.06
_______ realism
1.07
_______ symbolism
i. allegories representing vices and virtues
1.08
_______ expressionism
j. presenting life as the playwright saw it, rather than
as he would like it to be
1.09
_______ legitimate theater
k. commercial theater presenting short-run, low-budget
plays
1.010 _______ repertory theater
h. using concrete things to represent abstract ideas
l. presented the story of Noah
Complete these statements (each blank, 3 points).
1.011 The five periods of American drama include:
a. _______________________________________________________________________________________,
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________,
c. _______________________________________________________________________________________,
d. ___________________________________________________________________________________, and
e. _______________________________________________________________________________________.
1.012 Early American plays were of two distinct styles:
a. ___________________________________________________________________________________ and
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________
1.013 A popular type of character who displayed American common sense by out witting sophisticated
foreigners was called the ___________________________________________.
1.014 The first play of merit, written in 1852, was ___________________adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
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1.015 The birth of the “new drama” in the twentieth century was aided by two movements:
a. ___________________________________________________________________________________ and
b. ___________________________________________________________________________________.
1.016 Three new playwrights of the twentieth century were a. ______________________________________,
b. ______________________________________, and c. ______________________________________.
Write the letter of the correct answer on each line (each answer, 3 points).
1.017 Large commercial theaters in New York having long-run popular plays are referred to as ______.
a. repertory
c. regional
b. legitimate
d. Broadway
1.018 A playwright more interested in the psychological than the social was ______.
a. Arthur Miller
c. George L. Aiken
b. Clifford Odets
d. Harriet B. Stowe
1.019 A scrim is a ______.
a. spinning stage
b. literary philosophy
c. thin backdrop curtain
d. another term for playwright
1.020 The distortion of external appearances is called ______.
a. repertory
c. expressionism
b. symbolism
d. realism
Answer these questions (each question, 5 points).
1.021 Why was American drama slow in developing? _______________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
1.022 What are five types of contemporary American theater? _______________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
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Score
84
Teacher Check
_______________
___________________
Initial
10
Date