Studying drama

Characters in drama.
You can only learn about a character from the words of the play. This means that your sources of information are dialogue, soliloquy and, in certain cases, stage direction. A playwriter can’t tell you things directly. When we look at the words of a play we see four ways in which characters are created:
• the way they speak;
• what they say about themselves;
• what they say about each other;
• how they are contrasted.
As for contrasts they can be of different kinds. Some characters are contrasted because they have a lot in common, others because they are very different. It is important to understand why the writer contrasts characters. Usually a contrast brings out something important about the meaning of the play as a whole.
As soon as you ask what a character does in a play, you are asking a question about the plot. The plot of a play can be defined as all the actions of all the characters, and the reasons for them. There are different parts of dramatic plots.
Drama is the most immediate and intense form of literature. It is immediate because it is performed and intense because it is short. At the beginning of a play the writer must bring the issues of the plot quickly and clearly into focus.
It is a well known fact that a play is usually divided into acts, and acts are sometimes further divided into scenes. Modern plays are often divided into two or three acts, whereas the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries are usually divided into five. The division into acts corresponds to the important stages in the action of the play.
Sometimes plays have sub-plots. A sub-plot is a separate piece of action which is less important than the main plot; it might use a different set of characters though it could also use some from the main plot. In many cases sub-plots echo the themes of main plots.
The pace of a plot or the tension of a plot is the speed of events, and the point about it is that it always varies throughout a play. Sometimes the action changes from being quiet and leisurely to quite hectic.
Playwriters hold audience by arousing expectations. Drama appeals to something very primitive in us: we want to know what will happen next and how it will happen. In serious plays expectation arouses foreboding. We know that “Death of a Salesman” is not likely to end happily, so as the plot unfolds, our expectations are touched with sense of oncoming disaster.
Most plays raise expectation, but sometimes a playwriter works another way – by surprise. It can happen both in the middle and at the end of a play.

A successful climax to a play should do two things:
• fulfil expectations (or overturn them by surprise);
• embody the fulfillment in dramatic action.

The way plots end is very important because some plays (especially comedies) leave no questions to puzzle the audience, they finish off the action, some other plays leave a lot of questions, the action of them is not smoothly finished off at the end. Very often the end of a play reflects the beginning. Shakespeare does it for several reasons: to make the audience aware of the form of his art and so find pleasure in the symmetry of beginning and ends; to show the audience how much, or how little, things have changed in the course of the play.
Drama is a performing art. There are several elements that make up a theatrical performance: atmosphere, staging, actors.
The play creates a particular mood or feeling. On the page a play often seems to lack atmosphere which is created by characters, actions and imagery. You can sometimes tell the atmosphere of a play by looking at the characters (for example; if there are a number of stock characters, the play is likely to be light-hearted).
Stage scenery is usually the responsibility of the designer. Scenery should be appropriate to the atmosphere of the play as well as costume. Costume should express the particular character of an individual. Although lighting is a recent introduction to the theatre, it is a very powerful way of creating atmosphere. The point to remember about lighting – and also about scenery and costume – is that particular effects can interpret the play. “Twelfth Night”, for example can be played as a happy comedy and also as a melancholy play. Bright, clear light would help the former interpretation, and subdued light the latter.