The Nature of Drama - G.J Watson

 DRAMA

AN INTRODUCTION- By G.J Watson

-The Nature of Drama

Topics covered 

1) Definitions

2) Origins and Universality

3) Stage Conditions

4) The Physicality of the Stage

5) Plot and Action

6) The Language of Drama

7) Reading and Seeing

•Definition 

There are many definitions of Drama according to different critics. 

G. B. Tennyson says: 'Drama is a story that people act out on a stage before spectators.'

Eric Bentley remarks: 'The theatrical situation, reduced to a minimum, is that A impersonates B while C looks on.' 

Marjorie Boulton, a play 'is not really a piece of literature for reading. A true play is three-dimensional; it is literature that walks and talks before our eyes"

-It is an art which requires performance on a stage for its full effect; that it involves real-life people pretending to be imagined people; and that it places particular emphasis on action; of a concentrated, often intense, kind.

•Origins and Universality

Drama is a communal art involving a group of performers and a larger group who watch the performance. This communal aspect of drama is rooted in its remote origins, in primitive fertility rites and in religious observances. The plays ofWole Soyinka (b.1934), for example, are firmly rooted in aspects of the religion and myths of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. The Road (1965) is based on the Egungun ceremony in which a human is ritually possessed by the god Ogun.

-Both Greek and British drama were originally closely connected with religious worship, and although in each case the drama was secularised quite rapidly, it can still call upon powerful ritualised effects when necessary. 

-The universal appeal of drama, however, is not based on the longevity of the form, but on its naturalness. 

•Stage Conditions

What is crucial, since drama is at least as much a thing of the stage as of the page, is the need to develop and exercise our theatrical imaginations, and this requires some knowledge of stage conditions and techniques. 

Greek drama was presented in huge amphitheatres, which could accommodate as many as fifteen thousand spectators. The audience sat in tiers almost completely around the stage, which was about sixty or seventy feet across.

The Elizabethan playhouse was also circular, though much smaller and partly enclosed. The greatest difference between it and the Greek theatre consisted in its platform stage, which projected out into an audience who surrounded it on three sides, while other (usually wealthier) spectators sat around the stage higher up in covered galleries. 

Elizabethan acting styles could be more intimate than Greek styles, because of the relative proximity of the audience.

Neither Greek nor Elizabethan drama is naturalistic, though the Elizabethan is less formal. From the late seventeenth century, however, the proscenium, or picture-frame, stage became ever more popular, and this led to a much greater emphasis on 'realism', both in terms of acting styles and in settings

•The Physicality of the Stage

Though stage conditions have altered over the centuries and in different cultural contexts, the physical nature of a stage performance is pre-eminently what distinguishes drama from the other literary arts. 

The use of the physical grouping of the actors, the use of colour for visual impact, and the ability to juxtapose, for effects of immediate contrast or comparison, differing dramatic voices and contexts are important for the physicality of drama. 

•Plot and Action

The plot and action must, of necessity, be highly selective and relatively bold and clear to accommodate what Shakespeare calls 'the two hours' traffic of our stage'. 

The Language of Drama

The dialogue is all the language of a play: the author cannot intrude with explanatory, evaluative or descriptive passages of comment as the novelist may. His dialogue must further the plot, illuminate character, create an appropriate atmosphere or tone and enable the audience to grasp the underlying theme or moral idea of the play, and do all these things simultaneously. 

Dramatic poetry can greatly broaden the scope or scale of a play, overcoming, as Una Ellis-Fermor has pointed out, 'the disadvantage of that brevity which is essential to the concentration and immediacy of drama.

Reading and Seeing

A play, then, is something which exists in a study or a library, and something which achieves its fullest life on a stage. But there is no reason why the play-reader should not be able to activate his theatrical imagination, just as the director or actor must realise the play theatrically on the basis of many careful readings. Good reading will help good seeing; good seeing will help good reading. The crucial point is to realise that drama is a hybrid art form. Its longevity through human history suggests it is also a healthy one.