THE2000 Midterm Study guide already
passed 2026/2027
Requirements of Theatre - correct answer Actor or performer, audience, text (must have overall plan
ex. script), "liveness" (makes theatre stand out by performers or audience).
Theatre vs. Drama - correct answer Drama: Has text, reading experience, personal/individual, fixed,
metaphor is the skeleton. Theatre: Whole production, sensory experience, communal, interpretive,
metaphor: skeleton + muscle + skin.
Aristotle - correct answer Original theatre scholar, scientist.
Aristotle: Poetics - correct answer To find out what makes a good tragedy, or plot, and how theatre
started. Humans have an innate mimetic desire; because of this, theatre is universal.
Mimesis - correct answer imitation (mimic= comes from this)
Theoretical Conventions - correct answer Rules of the game: audience accept the conventions. Like
women on stage in English Renaissance to be dressed as men, Japanese Bunraku theatre operates
puppets, people in back where black, audience pretends they're not there.
Willing Suspension of Disbelief - correct answer Audience agrees not to disbelieve what they see on
stage while in theatre. Ex. James bond jumps in falling plane.
Aesthetic distance - correct answer Allows audience to separate themselves from the events on stage
and to recognize that these things are not a part of their objective reality. Ex. Romeo & Juliet, no one
stops Romeo.
Dramatis Personae - correct answer A list of the characters in a play identified before the story begins.
, Three text work together in performance - correct answer Spoken text, action text, subtext
Spoken text - correct answer dialogue, what characters say to each other during the play
Action text - correct answer The gestures and movements in the play
Subtext - correct answer Consists of unspoken thoughts, feelings, and intentions of the characters that
underlie and prompt the action and spoken texts.
Origin of western theory, two theories - correct answer 1) theatre emerged from rituals, linked w/
honoring of God. 2) Great ManTheory (Gerald Else)
Western Theory: From rituals - correct answer Dithyramb: similar to chorus poem. Got together and
sang, dance, thought one should step out and speak. Started dialogue, linked to tragedy.
Phallic Procession: linked to comedy. Parade like events, where eventually they entertained on large
phallices.
Western Theory: Great ManTheory - correct answer Advancing in soceity beginning with two men,
Thespis and Aeschylus.
Thespis - correct answer Credit for the first actor. Stepped out of chorus and began dialogue. Thespians
comes from this name, they're known as actors.
Aeschylus - correct answer Tragic playwrights. Second to get in dialogue w/ other person, makes on
discussion out of chorus. Most honored. His major work the Orestea, a trilogy including Agnmemnon,
The libation bearers, and Eumenides.
passed 2026/2027
Requirements of Theatre - correct answer Actor or performer, audience, text (must have overall plan
ex. script), "liveness" (makes theatre stand out by performers or audience).
Theatre vs. Drama - correct answer Drama: Has text, reading experience, personal/individual, fixed,
metaphor is the skeleton. Theatre: Whole production, sensory experience, communal, interpretive,
metaphor: skeleton + muscle + skin.
Aristotle - correct answer Original theatre scholar, scientist.
Aristotle: Poetics - correct answer To find out what makes a good tragedy, or plot, and how theatre
started. Humans have an innate mimetic desire; because of this, theatre is universal.
Mimesis - correct answer imitation (mimic= comes from this)
Theoretical Conventions - correct answer Rules of the game: audience accept the conventions. Like
women on stage in English Renaissance to be dressed as men, Japanese Bunraku theatre operates
puppets, people in back where black, audience pretends they're not there.
Willing Suspension of Disbelief - correct answer Audience agrees not to disbelieve what they see on
stage while in theatre. Ex. James bond jumps in falling plane.
Aesthetic distance - correct answer Allows audience to separate themselves from the events on stage
and to recognize that these things are not a part of their objective reality. Ex. Romeo & Juliet, no one
stops Romeo.
Dramatis Personae - correct answer A list of the characters in a play identified before the story begins.
, Three text work together in performance - correct answer Spoken text, action text, subtext
Spoken text - correct answer dialogue, what characters say to each other during the play
Action text - correct answer The gestures and movements in the play
Subtext - correct answer Consists of unspoken thoughts, feelings, and intentions of the characters that
underlie and prompt the action and spoken texts.
Origin of western theory, two theories - correct answer 1) theatre emerged from rituals, linked w/
honoring of God. 2) Great ManTheory (Gerald Else)
Western Theory: From rituals - correct answer Dithyramb: similar to chorus poem. Got together and
sang, dance, thought one should step out and speak. Started dialogue, linked to tragedy.
Phallic Procession: linked to comedy. Parade like events, where eventually they entertained on large
phallices.
Western Theory: Great ManTheory - correct answer Advancing in soceity beginning with two men,
Thespis and Aeschylus.
Thespis - correct answer Credit for the first actor. Stepped out of chorus and began dialogue. Thespians
comes from this name, they're known as actors.
Aeschylus - correct answer Tragic playwrights. Second to get in dialogue w/ other person, makes on
discussion out of chorus. Most honored. His major work the Orestea, a trilogy including Agnmemnon,
The libation bearers, and Eumenides.
