This document provides an overview of theatrical genres throughout history. It begins by discussing the cultural contexts that influence genre and defines some key genres like comedy and tragedy. It then examines specific genres in more depth, including ancient Greek and Roman tragedy, medieval religious drama, Shakespearean tragedy, and modern absurdist works. The document traces how genres have evolved over time and been adapted to different cultures while still embodying universal human themes. It also explores how genres serve social functions like teaching moral lessons or providing comic relief.

1. CHAPTER 8
Theatrical Genres

2. GENRE AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
• Genre reflects both universal human emotion and
social/cultural context
• Cultural bias
• What are some ways our culture defines genre?
• What are some ways other cultures define genres?

3. EUROPEAN GENRES
• Comedy
• Tragedy

4. TRAGEDY
• What are some trademarks of tragedy?
• The struggle against the world/elements/gods
• Human interest vs. Fate
• Desire vs. conscience
• Failure to overcome our destiny
• Tragedy embodies a moral lesson
• Helped unite and create a vibrant Greek society

5. THE GREEKS
Intro to Greek Theatre 6:53

6. ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDY
• Hubris – the overwhelming pride and confidence that leads a
character to believe a triumph over fate/the gods could be
possible
• Ex: Oedipus thinking he can avoid killing his father and marrying
his mother by running away from home… and then killing a guy.
And then marrying a recent widow who is old enough to be his
mother…

7. BASIC STRUCTURE
OF GREEK TRAGEDY
• Conflict between human pride and diving power
• Prologue – provides exposition (what you need to know to
understand the action to follow)
• Parados – chanting of the chorus, expanding on what is going
on between the characters
• 5 episodes – scenes between the characters, in present tense
• Exodus – the exit of the chorus

8. THE GREEK CHORUS

9. ARISTOTLE
• Wrote Poetics, defining and describing tragedy in the 5th
century BCE
• Best Plots contained:
• Unified plot – Climactic structure
• Highborn characters – inspire pity and fear
• Tragic character – a good person we can identify with who
does not deserve misfortune
• Tragic miscalculation – character flaw or hubris that causes
downfall
• Recognition – seeing the error of one’s ways a the moment
of downfall
• Reversal of fortune – The hero falls from a high position and
loses everything
• Pathos - The suffering of the tragic character
• Pity and fear – Emotions evoked as we watch the fall of the
tragic hero
• Catharsis – The purging of the audience’s emotion that
allows the lessons of the play to be learned through feeling

10. ANCIENT ROME
• Innovators not inventors
• Preferred comedy to tragedy
• Enjoyed violence, vice, and spectacle – culture of conquest
• Seneca wrote gory, over-the-top versions of Greek myths and
plays

11. OTHER EUROPEAN
GENRES
• Medieval theatre
• The church had banned theatre…for a bit…then
changed their minds
• Tropes – Biblical stories sung by a chorus
• Liturgical drama – told stories from the Bible, mostly
in Latin
• Began including set structures called mansions, as well
as spectacle

13. CHRISTIAN THEATRE
• 13th-15th centuries saw cycle plays depicting the journey from
Creation to the Final Judgment
• Latin replaced by the vernacular
• Also called mystery plays
• Cycle plays were performed on pageant wagons
• These plays were forbidden in England in the 16th century
• Variations on the cycle plays include passion plays, saint plays,
miracle plays, and morality plays

15. A PASSION PLAY

16. OBERAMMERGAU PASSION PLAY
• A play of life and death, promised in a moment of mortal threat -
so began the history of the Oberammergau Passion Play in 1633. In
the middle of the Thirty Years War, after months of suffering and
death from the plague, the Oberammergauers swore an oath that
they would perform the "Play of the Suffering, Death and
Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ" every ten years.
• At Pentecost 1634, they fulfilled their pledge for the first time on a
stage they put up in the cemetery above the fresh graves of the
plague victims. The tradition, maintained and experienced almost
without interruption for over 380 years. In the year 2020, the
Community of Oberammergau will perform the Passion Play, they
have preserved throughout the centuries with singular continuity,
for the 42nd time.
• The village at the edge of the Bavarian Alps expects approximately
500,000 visitors for the passion play, over half of which will be
international guests.

17. NEOCLASSICAL TRAGEDY
• 14th century Europe - Renaissance
• Collection and preservation of ancient texts
• Poetics used as a formula for tragedy
• Required three unities: time, location, and plot
• Verisimilitude: The appearance of truth -
idealized
• Elimination of soliloquies and chorus - replaced
• Used to teach moral lessons
• A reinterpretation of the classics in a Christian
world

18. ELIZABETHAN AND
JACOBEAN TRAGEDY
• During the rule of Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
and James I (1603-1625)
• Expanded the medieval concept of the
Great Chain of Being to more secular
hierarchies
• Often based in disruptions in political and
familial order – parallels
• Christian values vs. human desires and vice
• Plays start to include more lowborn
characters, subplots, longer time spans, and
multiple locations. (Episodic Structure)

19. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare who?
The most human human.

20. BOURGEOIS AND
ROMANTIC DRAMA
• Brought on by rising middle class and democratic
revolutions
• More common, relatable characters
• George Lillo’s The London Merchant -1st!
• Sturm und Drang, or Storm and Stress movement in
Germany – romanticism – nature, feelings, human
individualism
• Middle ground between rigid French neoclassical and looser
English tragedy, now called Weimar classicism

21. MELODRAMA
• Popular in the 19th
century
• Very clear “goody guy”
and “bad guy”
• Morally simplistic
• Used music to create
mood and tension
• Drew working class
audiences

22. MODERN TRAGEDY
• Is there still tragedy in contemporary theatre if we have no
fixed value systems?
• Can tragedy truly be independent of universal moral
concerns?
• Every day people facing conflict in every day life

23. COMEDY
• We’ve established that tragedy seeks to teach moral lessons to it’s
audience. What social function does comedy serve?

24. ANCIENT COMEDY
• Rooted in rituals, concerning
fertility and regeneration
• Greek Old Comedy is full of dirty
jokes and phallic imagery
• Most comedies end in marriage
• The world falls apart, and the
play follows the characters
putting it back together
• Comedies deal with the familiar

26. CHARACTERISTICS OF COMEDY
• Suspension of Natural Laws- One characteristic of most
comedy is a temporary suspension of the natural laws of
probability, cause and effect, and logic. Actions do not have
the consequences they do in real life.
• Example: In comedy, when a haughty man walking down the
street steps on a child’s skateboard and goes sprawling on
the sidewalk, we do not fear for his safety or wonder if he
has any bruises. The focus in comedy is on the man’s being
tripped up and getting his comeuppance.
• The Comic Premise - an idea or concept that turns the
accepted notion of things upside down and makes this
upended notion the basis of a play.

27. COMIC FORMS
• Satire – ironic, witty attacks on government/social issues
• Situational Comedy – ridiculous situations, mistaken
identity, eavesdropping, misunderstandings, all happily
resolved
• Farce – physical and slapstick humor, extreme situations,
superficial characterizations
• Romantic Comedy – sweet, naïve young lovers and the
obstacles they face
• Comedy of Manners – pokes fun at social mores and
practices

28. TRAGICOMEDY
• The difference between tragedy and comedy is not in
what occurs, but in our perspective
• Includes plays that do not fit neatly into the definition of
tragedy
• Embraces the idea that life is checkered with triumph and
failure, love and loss, joy and sadness
• Existentialism – depicts a senseless, godless world where
life is without meaning or purpose

29. THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
• A form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human
existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and
meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations,
and plots that lack realistic or logical development.
• Plays falling into the category of absurdism convey
humanity’s sense of alienation and its loss of bearings in an
illogical, unjust, and ridiculous world. Although serious, this
viewpoint is generally depicted in plays with considerable
humor; an ironic note runs through much of theatre of the
absurd.
• Absurdist plays suggest the idea of absurdity both in what
they say—that is, their content—and in the way they say it,
their form. Their structure, therefore, is a departure from
dramatic structures of the past.

30. SAMUEL BECKETT
• An Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre
director, poet, and literary translator who lived
in Paris for most of his adult life. He wrote in both
English and French.
• Beckett's work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook
on human existence, often coupled with black
comedy and gallows humor, and became
increasingly minimalist in his later career.
• Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in
Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms
for the novel and drama—in the destitution of
modern man acquires its elevation".

33. GENRE TODAY
• Genre provides a framework, but no longer imposes “rules”
on the playwright