Introduction to Theatre – Professor Orenstein
Spring 2020

Midterm, Take-Home Exam
Due on Thursday, April 2 no later than 11:59pm

Submit your exam to your Section Leader online in the Turnitin Assignment posting in the Course Materials section of the Blackboard site for your SECTION (not the lecture class). Your Section Leaders will create this assignment spot on their Blackboard Pages.

Instructions for posting a Turnitin assignment can be found here: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/it/blackboard/repository/files/blackboard-9.1-documents/submittingassignments.pdf

Pick TWO of the following questions. Answer each in a well-organized, 1-2 pages essay.

Please incorporate specific examples to support your points and draw from the terms on the exam review sheet, where relevant, in your writing. You may go back to your class notes, the textbook, plays we have read, and the class PowerPoints posted online with their embedded video links, in formulating your responses.

1. Consider the events covered in the NY Times article “Religious Rite Takes Hamlet Back in Time Every Seven Years” (September 11, 2017). These take place in the Italian town of Guardia Sanframondi every seven years, and include scenes from the Bible and penitential acts. Are these events theatre? Ritual? What is your view and what argument and evidence support it? How does your answer express your understanding of what is theatre? What challenges does this event present to notions of theatre and ritual? (You can find the article here https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/world/europe/italy-religious-rite-guardia-sanframondi-.html )

2. You have seen The Hunter Theatre Project production of Mac Beth and written about the performance. But a huge amount of work took place offstage to get this play on stage, to bring you into the theatre, and to maintain the production during the run. Going back to your notes from Brad Krumholz’s lecture and the material in your book, describe how you imagine the production process to have taken place from the moment of deciding to stage the play until closing. Which personnel were involved? What were their roles? How did they work together? What unique challenges might this production have presented to them?

3. What is the difference between the story and plot of a play? What are the basic elements of the climactic play structure that create dramatic action? What are the main differences between episodic and climactic structure? Analyze one of the plays we have looked at this semester (Macbeth, Sweat, Fires in the Mirror) applying these concepts. How does this view of dramatic structure inform the process of bringing a play from the page to the stage?

4. Compare the work of an actor trained in the Stanisvlaski system to an actor trained in one of the following: Suzuki method, or commedia dell’arte, or the work of Anna Deavere Smith in Fires in the Mirror. What does the training of each actor consist of and why? What is each actor’s process in creating a performance? What is their relationship to a theatrical text? What differences do we see in the styles or ways each actor appears and expresses themselves onstage because of their training and approach to acting? What does each style emphasize for performance?

I choose questions one and 3

Midterm Paper

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Midterm Paper

Question 1

Penitential acts, scenes, and events, as seen in this article, are an embodiment of both rituals and theater. On many occasions, rituals and theatre are similar; for instance, in both, there are group movements, repetition of certain behaviors or patterns, specific themes, and musical elements such as music and drumbeats. The central theme in the article involves religious rites and rituals followed by people from generation to generation. Besides, the conduct of this ritual is systematic, with people moving in groups. The Sunday procession illustrates group movement with residents wearing costumes that impersonate biblical characters (Pianigiani, 2017). The costumes, heavy makeup, and impersonation among residents provide an arena for live scenes, which is similar to what happens in theatre. Small girls are dressed as angels, and women impersonate ancient Roman beauties. They match down the streets, each assuming their roles and positions while performing ceremonial rites such as praying, kneeling, and even rising hands, among others. Just as in theatrical performance, ritual performance involves a whole picture that seeks to feed the narrative, in this case, religious rites with biblical scenes and pertinent acts. All of these aspects are similar to theatrical plots.

Theatre involves live performers such as actors and actresses, presence of repeated behaviors, and communication of specific themes. More importantly, they have a stage and present imagined or real events. In that case, the ritual rites described above, to some extent, relate to theatre performance. Distinguishing rituals and theater can be challenging mainly because they share similar aspects. Nevertheless, the rites are religious-based with communal participators while theatre has divided actors with an audience. The lack of an audience in rituals becomes challenging to draw a line that distinguishes rituals from theatre.

Question 3

Plots and stories are two essential elements when writing perfect plays. A story is composed of five main features, including the characters, setting, conflict, themes, and a plot. Plots, on the other hand, include elements such as conflict, resolution, climax, and action (rising and falling actions). In a play, a story consists of a general idea or theme that describes the events of a play. On the other hand, a plot in a play involves literary devices used to tell the story, such as plans, schemes, and literary devices. Plots use these devices to reveal emotional significance and thematic aspects in a story, which brings about the cause and effect aspect of events. This results in a linear order of stories, whereby play elements such as characters, theme, language, rhythm, and spectacles are unified through a plot, describing aspects of climatic play structure. It differs from episodic play structure whereby play elements are not placed in a linear arrangement and does not require producing the cause-and-effect feeling. In this structure, play items are linked through the themes, characters, and probably location, but not necessarily in a unifying plot.

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s plays; the story involves a Scottish soldier who receives a prophesy that one day he would become King of Scotland. The soldier is consumed with a thirst for power and ambition that he commits many murders to assume control and protect his tyrannical rule. The plot structure used in Macbeth play is chronological; events occur in a sequence of their happening. The plot structure of Macbeth can best be described using five stages of as Freytag describes, namely, conflict, resolution, climax, and action (rising and falling actions).

In Act 1, exposition involves introducing characters, the setting, events that are about to follow, and critical ideas, needed to understand the play. This is seen when witches, who are main characters are introduced, making predictions to Macbeth being a future king. Hence, the plot forms with ideas and thoughts, such as murder, shaping the theme and storyline (Shakespeare, 2012). The rising action is experienced in Act 2 of the play, whereby related events occur in a chronological order that lead to the climax and critical development of the plot. Examples of these events include Macbeth changing his mind, Lady Macbeth taking control, and the ultimate pivotal moment happens, which is the death of King Duncan. In the climax stage, a turning point of the play is realized, which is in Act 3. The act shows Macbeth as King, which brings about happy emotional effects, as Macbeth realizes the prediction. Moreover, the cause-and-effect aspect is created, if Act 2 did not happen, where King Duncan died (cause), then Macbeth would not be King (effect).

Act 4 of the play, a falling action is experienced whereby the central conflict is realized, friction between the protagonist and antagonist, namely Macbeth and MacDuff, respectively. The falling trend is seen when events in Macbeth’s reign begin to fall, necessitating him to return to the witches. Moreover, the act brings about murder of Macduff’s family, and he plans his invasion. At this point, we can predict the catastrophic stage where Macbeth is defeated (effect), seen from the invasion (cause) orchestrated (Shakespeare, 2012). In Act 5, the cause and effect aspect is highly illustrated as the invasion (cause) results in Malcolm being a new King, the Macbeths dies, and the prediction fails. All these are effects, which would utterly result in normalcy in the state. Macbeth’s structure and plot can best be described using climatic play structure, whereby there are interactional scenes and limited scenes such as the murder of King Duncan, which is described shows the translation of the text to stage. Moreover, all scenes are chronologically developed to meet one climax, revealing a tight construction as well as character exposition for speedy effects. These aspects show how the structure translates the text into stage.

References

Pianigiani, G. (2017, September 10). Religious Rite Takes Hamlet Back in Time Every Seven Years. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/world/europe/italy-religious-rite-guardia-sanframondi-.html

Shakespeare, W. (2012). Macbeth Companion (Includes Study Guide, Complete Unabridged Book. Anyka: Book Caps.