Drama

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: What Is Drama?

• A tragedy is a play with a serious plot in which the protagonist experiences a conflict that does not resolve into a happy ending.
• A play that is a comedy often has a humorous plot that ends happily. A farce is a comedy with exaggerated characters, plot, and actions.
• A tragicomedy is a play with elements of both comedy and tragedy.
• A melodrama has exaggerated characters, plot, and actions. Sometimes the exaggeration makes the melodrama seem humorous.
• A spectacle is a show that has grand costumes, sets, and lighting and often contains music.
• A musical incorporates singing and dancing into the story.
• The script is the written play. It is divided into major sections called acts and even smaller divisions called scenes.
• In a script, the lines are the words the actor says, and the stage directions are the instruction for how the actors should act and move.
• Blocking is the placement and movement of actors on the stage.
• Set pieces are stage scenery that stand by themselves, often used to establish the setting of a scene, while props are portable objects that actors carry and use to enhance their performance and interact with the story.
• On a proscenium stage, plays are performed in a frame, and the audience faces the frame.
• In a thrust stage, the audience is on three sides of the stage.
• In a theater-in-the-round or arena stage, the audience surrounds the stage.

Lesson 2: How to Read Drama

• Foreshadowing involves hints about things that will happen later in the story.
• At the end of a tragedy, the audience should experience catharsis, a release of the tensions and emotions built up during the play.

Lesson 3: Life and Times

• Tenements are unsafe and overcrowded apartment buildings found in poor areas of a city.
• Presage is a foreknowledge or warning that something will happen in the future.
• Brown vs. the Board of Education was a Supreme Court decision in 1954 stating that separate schools for white and black students was unconstitutional. This court decision was not easily accepted by all the states and caused many protests.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law in 1964 and made racial discrimination in education, employment, businesses, and public places illegal.

Lesson 4: A Raisin in the Sun

• Beat means pause. It is a drama term used in stage directions.
• Know the definitions of the following vocabulary words: vindicated, proposition, permeated, heathenism, mutilated, assimilationism, raptly.
• Vernacular is the way ordinary people in a region speak.
• Dialect is a variety of language from a specific region or group of people.
• Linguists are scientists who study language.
• The International Phonetic Alphabet is the alphabet linguists use to describe every sound in all languages, providing a standardized system for representing speech sounds. It is an essential tool for accurately studying pronunciation, understanding language differences, and teaching phonetics across various linguistic contexts.

Lesson 5: Act II

• Know the definitions of the following words: amiably, coquettishly, epitaph, plaintively, rebuffs, reverie.
• Prometheus was a trickster figure from Greek mythology who gave fire to man.

Lesson 6: Act III

• An epigraph is a short poem or quotation at the beginning of a book.
• The Harlem Renaissance took place in Harlem, New York, during the 1920s and 1930s. It was an important time when the African-American arts and intellectual scene grew to great importance.

Lesson 7: Fences

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Lesson 8: Shakespeare

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Lesson 9: Romeo and Juliet

• Comic relief is a section in a serious play that gives the audience a rest from the tension.
• A bride's family paying goods or property to a groom for marriage is called a dowry.

Lesson 10: Figurative Language

• An oxymoron is a statement or phrase that uses terms that seem to contradict each other. For example, "jumbo shrimp."
• A pun is the clever or humorous use of a word that has more than one meaning. Note that often homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings) are often used for puns.
• An idiom is a word or phrase used by a group of people where the expression has come to mean something other than its literal meaning. For example, in America we say, "He's on the ball." This means he is quick to learn or understand. He is not really on top of a ball.
• A euphemism is a word or group of words that more mildly expresses something that could be difficult or offensive if expressed directly.

Lesson 11: Nuanced Meaning

• Etymologists study the origins of words and how they change.
• The study of the origins of words and how they change is etymology.
• Denotation is a word's dictionary definition, and connotation describes the feelings the word suggests.

Lesson 12: Time and Tension

• Foreshadowing gives the audience hints of what will come later in the play.

Lesson 13: Tragic Hero

• Dynamic characters in a work of literature change.
• Static characters in literature do not change.
• Round characters are those the audience knows a lot about.
• Flat characters are those that the audience knows little about. They often play a supporting role.
• A tragic hero is a main character whose flaws cause his or her destruction.
• An epic poem is a long narrative poem usually featuring a hero.
• One inspiration for Romeo and Juliet was the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in Metamorphoses, an epic poem written by Ovid, an ancient Roman poet.

Lesson 14: Modern Retelling

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Final Project: Drama

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Semester Exam: Semester Exam

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