Elements of Drama

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- DRAMA - DRAMA - DRAMA - DRAMA - A play is a dramatic composition that has been written for theatrical performance and tells a story of conflict and emotion using action and dialogue (Goodvin). Drama, like poetry, is a very old literary genre that developed long before the novel and short story. The oldest dramas that have survived in Western literature, those of the Greek playwrights, were composed and performed twenty five hundred years ago. Drama has a distinctive appearance of a script with its stage directions, character parts, and divisions into acts. A play is written to be performed in front of an audience by actors who take the roles of the characters and who present the story through dialogue and action. Older plays, such as those written by the Greeks or Shakespeare, consist almost entirely of the words spoken by these characters (the dialogue). More recent plays usually contain nonspoken material (the stage directions) that tells the actors when to enter or leave the performance space, gives suggestions about how to speak their dialogue (their lines), and describes their costumes or their physical surroundings on stage (the setting) (Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved). Drama is different than other genres because the author's (dramatist's) intention is fulfilled by the presentation of actors and theatrical devices, not reading or reciting. It is an oral and visual creation whose written form is first a preparation (the script), secondly an aid to performance (the actors' lines), and lastly a printed text for critical and educational analysis. While the words of a dramatic text remain static, the effect of the play varies with each interpretation. Kinds of Drama The two major kinds of drama are tragedy and comedy- a division established by the Greeks. Even
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