Drama

Glossary

conventions
common principles of form and/or style shared by performers and audiences, usually by tradition, but sometimes negotiated within the performance

design concepts
the idea or vision of the designer, in consultation with the director, in interpreting the play for performance design elements include line, shape, space, colour, mood, atmosphere,
visual and aural texture, scale and visual relationships

directorial concept/vision
is based on the director’s creative interpretation of the play’s text, themes, characters, style, mood, structure and context elements of drama include tension, focus, rhythm, space, movement, sound, time, symbol, mood, pace, pause and atmosphere,character/role, actor and audience relationship

elements of production include direction, dramaturgy, design, technical operation and stage management

experiential learning involves students in learning activities that focus on theexperience rather than the theory only. For instance,experiential learning in Design will involve students creating a design, working with design rather than just reading about a design

forms
established sets of structural principles (sometimes rules) by which drama and/or theatre is produced and/or critically evaluated. Examples include historical forms such as Ancient Greek theatre, commedia dell’arte, melodrama, farce, or one of the forms of classical Asian theatre, and recent forms such as community and event theatre, contemporary, avant-garde performance, mixed media, or drama on film

improvisation
spontaneous, unscripted (but not necessarily unplanned or unprepared) performance, used either as a rehearsal technique or in live performance

media feature story
an article on a production, or an aspect of a production, published in a newspaper or magazine. It could be based on an interview with the playwright, director, designer(s) or a performer or performer(s) or include quotations from any of these

performance style refers to elements used in the realisation of a work in performance. Where the work is text-based, the written play-text itself will often imply the adoption of a certain performance style. Thus a text suggestive of a music-hall entertainment implies a music-hall style of presentation. It is also possible for a director to approach a work through a performance style alien to the original text (eg a Kabuki Shakespeare)

rationale
a declaration explaining motivations and making known intentions. In this syllabus the term is used to expand the idea of the artistic idea or concept behind each of the Individual Projects

styles
established aesthetic features of any part of the process of making and performing works of drama and theatre (including styles of writing, directing, design and
performance)

text the set of signs that may be read as producing meaning in any work, not including the contextual meanings that the reader brings. So the text of a novel is the words on the page,the text of a film is the images on the screen together with the soundtrack, and the text of a theatrical performance includes all the elements of production

traditions commonly held meanings and/or values, or types of practice, in a particular society, considered historically workshop the process of action-learning and exploration conducted in class or in the rehearsal room, involving asking theoretical and practical questions and exploring them through the experimental investigation of possible answers

Source: Drama stage 6 Syllabus, Board of Studies NSW 1999. pp56-57.