Dramatic materials

Drama knowledge I. Definition and characteristics

Drama is an art in which actors play roles on the stage and publicly perform stories. Drama is a comprehensive stage art, which shapes the image of stage art, reveals social contradictions and reflects real life with the help of literature, music, dance and art. It is a literary genre. Drama is inseparable from drama conflict, which is manifested in the conflict of characters and a series of actions. The basic elements of drama are contradiction and conflict. Reproducing the life of social struggle through the concrete stage image can arouse the audience's strong emotional reflection and achieve the purpose of social education.

Drama is the art of actors performing on the stage, so it should be restricted by the stage and meet the needs of performance. This determines some of its characteristics:

First, conflicts and struggles in social life are more typical and concentrated.

Second, the time and place of stories are often very concentrated, and the number of people who appear is also limited.

Third, the character and story line are mainly expressed by the language of the characters on the spot.

Fourth, the development of stories is often divided into scenes.

Second, several terms.

Several elements of drama: including stage description, drama conflict, characters' lines, etc.

Drama language includes lines (that is, character language) and stage description.

1. conflict: it is the expression of contradictory struggle. Mainly through the conflicts between people, it shows the contradictions and conflicts between advanced and backward, progress and conservatism. Drama conflict should be more intense, typical, concentrated and dramatic than life conflict.

2. lines: it is the language of the characters in the play. It is characterized by character and action, that is, a character's language is linked with his actions. The forms of expression of lines are: dialogue, monologue, narration (the role on the stage leaves other roles to talk to the audience), inner white (talking backstage), subtext (that is, there is something in the words, meaning is intentional, and there is a sound outside the strings). In fact, it is a polysemy phenomenon in language) and so on.

3. Scene: Scene, that is, opening the stage curtain once, a scene is a relatively complete section of the play. The scene, that is, the opening of the second act of the stage, is a relatively small part of the play.

4. Stage description: It is a description of some points of attention to help directors and actors master the plot. The contents of the explanation are about time, place, characters, scenes, actions and expressions of characters in scenes, appearances and exits of characters in scenes, "effects", opening and closing, and so on.

Third, the classification of drama:

1) is divided into drama (such as thunderstorm), opera (such as white-haired girl), dance drama (such as Silk Road Rain), pantomime and so on.

2) According to the complexity and structure of the plot: one-act drama, full-length drama (such as Thunderstorm);

3) Times reflected by themes: historical dramas (such as Qu Yuan) and modern dramas (such as thunderstorms);

4) According to the nature of the conflict: tragedy (such as Qu Yuan), comedy (such as The Merchant of Venice) and drama (such as The White-haired Girl).

5) According to the performance occasion: stage play, radio play, TV play, etc.

Related knowledge of drama literature

Dramatic literature refers to various specific scripts. Different from other literary works, the purpose of writing plays is not to read, but to perform. Great dramatists like Guan Hanqing and Shakespeare have written dozens of plays in their lifetime. Therefore, the law of script writing is bound to be restricted by the law of stage art, and the characteristics of drama literature are as follows: first, it is necessary to concisely reflect life, concentrate characters, time and scenes in the limited time and space where dramatic conflicts are strong, so that the small world on the stage can accommodate the big world as much as possible, and artistically reproduce the complicated real life on the stage with shorter space, fewer characters, fewer scenes and simpler events. Second, the language in the script, mainly the language of the characters (lines), must be personalized. The characters with certain personality are the language from the heart and spit out from the mouth. Let the audience see the confrontation between the characters through dialogue, produce a sense of action, and thus show the plot. Third, there must be concentrated conflicts. Only conflict can promote the development of the plot. Without concentrated conflict, there would be no drama. Dramatic literature is not a narrative style like novels, but a first-person narrator. Only by letting the characters appear and speak in their own way can the opposition and conflict of the characters be formed and the "drama" be created. Fourth, we should skillfully arrange the structure and layout of the script, so that the development and ending of the plot are very clever, even fascinating and unpredictable, and enhance the dramatic effect. The classification of drama literature is diverse. From the nature of content, there are tragedies, comedies and dramas (tragicomedy); There are drama, opera, ballet, musical and poetic drama in expression; From the structural form, there are one-act dramas and full-length dramas; From the classification of themes, there are historical dramas, modern dramas, pantomime and so on.

Drama, opera and ballet drama literature are classified according to artistic forms and expressions, including drama, opera and ballet. Drama is characterized by dialogue as the main means of expression. Dialogue must be a standard literary language, easy to understand, easily accepted by the audience and suitable for reflecting life. Opera is a dramatic form that combines vocal music and instrumental music, so it is also called musical. Some operas only have vocals, no monologues and dialogues, while others have both. The lyrics and music of opera are very important, and the language of lyrics should be the language of poetry. Dance drama is a dramatic art that integrates dance, music and drama. Its characteristics are: the development of the plot and the shaping of characters are mainly expressed by the actors' dance movements (and musical language). There are two kinds of dances in the play: plot dance is used to express the plot of the play, and performance dance is used to describe the times and environmental characteristics of the plot.

One-act drama and full-length drama are divided into one-act drama and full-length drama according to the structure and capacity of drama. A one-act play is a short play with its own scene. Due to the strict time and scene restrictions, the plot structure is required to be compact, and the contradictions and conflicts unfold relatively quickly, while the basic parts of the plot-the beginning, development, climax and ending-should be shown. Full-length drama is a big drama. Large capacity and complicated story. Because it shows the interval of time and the transfer of space by changing the scene, it can transfer the events that are inconvenient to perform on the stage to the background, handle the events in different time and space, and reflect the broader social life. These two dramatic styles have their own advantages and are irreplaceable. There are also many masterpieces handed down from generation to generation. The whole play is Hamlet by Shakespeare, Dou Eyuan by Guan Hanqing and Thunderstorm by Cao Yu. Chekhov's Marriage, Ding Xilin's Three Dollars National Currency and other one-act dramas.

Tragedy, comedy and drama tragedy were originally performed in ancient Greece as the song of the goat thanking God when sowing in spring, so tragedy means "the song of the goat" in Greek. In the earliest tragedies, the protagonist can't escape under the control of fate, and often ends in failure and extinction. With the development of the times, the concept of tragedy has undergone fundamental changes. For example, Shakespeare's tragic characters show that the contradiction between ideal desire and social reality is irreconcilable. Engels believed that "the inevitable requirement of history and the impossibility of realizing this requirement" constituted a tragic conflict. When talking about the tragic social conflict, Lu Xun pointed out: "Tragedy is to destroy the valuable things in life for people to see." This shows that the tragic drama conflict is often the sacrifice of the positive characters for a just struggle, which arouses people's sympathy and gives people positive and powerful inspiration and even encouragement. China's classical tragedies often have a romantic ideal ending, which is inspiring and inspiring. There is a qualitative difference between the tragedy in socialist period and the tragedy in history. The hero's temporary failure and personal sacrifice are just a twist on his way forward In ancient Greece, comedy was originally a carnival song and dance to thank God when harvesting grapes in autumn, so comedy means "carnival song" in Greek. When holding carnival songs and dances, leaders often say some ridiculous things to make everyone laugh. Therefore, the characteristics of comedy are mostly to ridicule and satirize the ugly phenomena in life and the shortcomings and weaknesses of some characters in a funny way. Lu Xun said that comedy is "tearing that worthless thing to people." Generally speaking, the ending of comedy is always happy, happy. Drama is a type between tragedy and comedy. In drama literature, there are a lot of dramas. In most cases, social life is not a simple tragedy or comedy, but mixed with sadness and joy. It often reflects the conscious struggle between the two forces, mixed with sadness and joy, which means that the just side finally wins and the ending is happy. People call it drama, or tragicomedy. In the struggle, the protagonist of a play sometimes fails and even sacrifices his life. For example, Liu Hulan in Liu Hulan is not a tragic figure doomed to be destroyed in the conflict. Her heroic sacrifice shows that the revolutionary cause is bound to win because of the indomitable struggle of revolutionaries. So the emotion in the play is that excitement is greater than sadness, and joy is greater than sadness. Even when tragic factors are involved, the tone is tragic, not painful.