Glossary of Drama Conventions Used in Exercises

Hot-Seating -- A person is questioned in role by the rest of the group who are out of role in order that all of the participants may have a shared understanding of the character's background, attitudes, motives, and values.

Role-on-the-Wall -- A picture of a person is drawn on the wall and is given an identity, usually a character within a lesson. Students write about the character's inner thoughts inside the picture, and they describe external traits around the outside of the drawing. The role can be used to stimulate writing, improvisation, story development, or as a way into examination of a piece of literature.

Role Play - The entire group or individuals take on specific roles, designated by the leader, in order to explore an imagined situation. The group can be assigned a general role or individuals can be assigned a specific role. This activity usually works best when accompanied by teacher-in-role.

Side Coaching - Guidance given by leader to the students during an exercise to help them focus dramatic action, use imagination or enrich detail.

Spotlight -- Leader "freezes" the action and calls students' attention to one group at a time. The selected group performs their improvisation as everyone else watches.

Soundscape - Leader asks group to create the sounds they hear in a given environment, sometimes side coaching is provided to increase or decrease intensity or change the location.

Tableau/Still Image -- Participants create a frozen picture (photo, painting, cartoon, statue) which serves to crystallize an idea or to communicate a concrete image. These images may be brought to life or thought-tracked.

Teacher-in-Role - The leader assumes a role in order to guide the drama by enactment with the students. Focus, tension, situation and complication can be stimulated or maintained through mutual participation.

Thought-tracking - The leader "freezes" the action and moves to each student and taps his/her shoulder. The student then speaks his/her thoughts aloud, usually in role. Leader·may encourage students by asking them, "Who are you?" "What is happening?" "How do you feel?" "What do .you expect will happen next?"

Glossary of Literary Terms

Alienation Effect (A-Effect) - requires audience and actors to retain a degree of critical detachment from play and performance. From the playwright's point of view this involves the use of various techniques to keep the audience conscious of the fact that it is a theatrical performance they are witnessing and to limit their emotional identification with characters and situations in the play. The actors also must contribute by the way they play their parts, implying an attitude to their characters rather than attempting to lose themselves and play them entirely from the inside.

Agitprop (Agitation and propaganda) Theatre - is theatre that deals with political issues and tries to incite an audience response to those issues so that the audience members will do something about them.

Epic Theatre - As espoused by Brecht, "the essential point of the Epic theatre is that it appeals less to the spectator's feelings than to his reason." The term is derived from Aristotelian usage, for a narrative not governed by the unity of time, and in the theatre epic drama usually means a series of incidents simply and clearly presented with restrictions of conventional theatrical construction.

Expressionism - A reaction against theatrical realism, Expressionism sought to mirror inner psychological realities rather than physical appearances. Bold uses of symbolic settings and costumes and abrupt extravagant playing typified this style of performance. This theatrical movement dominated German theatre in the 1920s.

Social Gestus - in relation to Brecht's "A-effect," the social gest is the attitude or gestures used by actors that are relevant to society, the gest that allows conclusions to be drawn about social circumstances. For example, "the look of a hunted animal" can become a social gest if it is shown that particular maneuvers by men can degrade the individual man to the level of a beast.

Material on this page written by Lyn Peticolas, John P. McEneny, and Jeff Kennedy; edited by Nancy Swortzell, 1997