Theater: Forms, History, and Characteristics

Basic Elements of Theater

Theater is a literary form that compiles facts about real or imaginary human experiences and represents physical space for a specific audience.

Basic Components

• Author: The person who writes the text.
• Actors: Those who represent the characters created by the author on stage.
• Audience: The spectators.
• Space: The place where the text is represented.
• Director: The person who shapes the author's idea.
• Staging: Elements that serve to represent the space (scenery, costumes, etc.).

Other Aspects

• Style: Direct.
• Form of communication: Dialogue in all its variants (monologue, soliloquy, etc.).

Structure

• Main text: The original literary construction. It can be divided into acts, representing time units in the development of the action.
• Scene: A unit marked by the intervention of the same characters.
• Table: Indicates a change of scenery.
• Stage directions: Clarifications about the staging.

Classification of Theatrical Forms

Tragedy

• Notes: Originated in Greece. A classic genre.
• Characters: Gods or nobles who must fight against an unavoidable destiny.
• Conflict: The hero clashes with destiny, which will be catastrophic.
• Language: Cultured.
• Authors: Sophocles (Greek), Seneca (Roman).
• Scheme: An event breaks the established equilibrium, which is restored at the end (often without the conflict being resolved).
• Catharsis: A purifying inner experience of great meaning, caused by an external stimulus. The spectator feels identified with the hero and is compelled to judge them.

Comedy

• Notes: Presents the reality of everyday conflicts that people experience. It has a happy ending.
• Characters: Often ridiculous, ignorant, or archetypal simplifications. They embody a flaw or a value not quite aligned with the current social norms (satirized).
• Outline: Balance - conflict - return to balance.
• Intent: To show a different and desirable model of society.
• Language: Colloquial.
• Subgenres:
  • Comedy of Dionysus: Originates in the folk songs of Dionysus.
  • New Comedy: More realistic.
  • Commedia dell'Arte: Represented by masked characters.
  • High Comedy: Focuses on love themes and uses elaborate language.
  • Comedy of Manners: Explores the behavior of different social classes.
  • Sentimental Comedy: Has a moralizing intention.

Drama

Characteristics

Drama shares elements of tragedy and comedy, often with a tragic ending (suicide, death, loneliness, etc.). It presents a hero facing a conflict within human dimensions. The outcome is often unexpected, surprising the spectator.

Forms

• Lyric drama (opera)
• Drama
• Liturgical drama
• Language: Standard

Religious Arts

Emerged during the Middle Ages with performances of liturgical dramas. Initially, these were performed in churches and in Latin. Later, they were staged outside the temples and in the vernacular. The religious theme was eventually abandoned. These primitive representations were called "mysteries" and were grouped into cycles according to the subject and time of year (Christmas, Easter, etc.).

Secular Arts

Sketches

A dramatic genre of entertainment, comic in nature, caricatured, and brief, featuring popular characters and settings. It has fairly constant thematic features: it portrays everyday situations through a character type indicated by excessive traits (miserliness, authoritarianism taken to ridiculous extremes) and extols the virtues of daily life (love, loyalty, etc.). It is a precedent of the comedy of manners and features a single event.

Entr'acte (Starter)

A short theatrical piece. It uses plain language and caricature, aimed at an undemanding audience. It is usually represented during a break in a comedy.

Farce

A short composition of comic character. The characters are deformed into caricatures.