The document defines and provides examples of four major genres in theatre: tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and musical theatre. Tragedy features an unhappy ending and deals with moral issues. Comedy uses everyday characters in unusual situations and ends happily. Melodrama grew out of the Industrial Revolution and features clear conflicts of good vs evil. Musical theatre combines music, singing, dancing, and theatre into one performance.

2. The Text:
Genres
• A genre is an organizational tool
• Groups scripts together by commonalities
• Historically, there are four major genres:
– Tragedy
– Comedy
– Melodrama
– Musical Theatre

3. The Text:
Tragedy
• A serious play with an unhappy ending
• Features a hero with a tragic flaw
– In Greek theatre, this is almost always pride
• Concerned specifically with moral and social questions or
problems
• Compels catharsis in the audience – the expulsion of feelings
of pity and fear

4. The Text:
Tragedies
Clockwise from top left: Medea,
The Crucible,
4.48 Psychosis, Long Day’s
Journey into Night

5. The Text:
Comedy
• Ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, ending happily.
• Unlike tragedy, comedy demands distance and objectivity
• Physical comedy is prevalent
– Sight gags: satyr plays had characters sporting large phalluses
– Slapstick: a device from commedia dell’arte
• Very few remain from Ancient Greek times

6. The Text:
Comedies
Clockwise from Top Left: Taming
of the Shrew, The Philadelphia
Story, The Foreigner, The
Lieutenant of Inishmore

7. The Text:
Melodrama
• Drama “with music”
• Hugely popular in 19th c. Europe and America
• Grows out of the Industrial Revolution
• Moral conflicts: good vs. evil
• Stock characters
• Audience expectations are fulfilled
– Good guy wins, evil is punished
– Hero gets the girl
– Values of society are reaffirmed

8. The Text:
Melodramas
From left: Dirty Work at
the Crossroads, The
Shaughraun

9. The Text:
Musical Theatre
• Combination of music and theatre
• Typical has actors singing onstage
• Accompanied by a live orchestra
• Usually some form of choreography
• Show Boat (1927) by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II is
considered the birth of the American musical
• 1940’s the Golden Age of the Musical

10. The Text:
Musical Theatre
Clockwise, from Top Left:
Oklahoma!, Anything
Goes!, Avenue Q, The Book
of Mormon

11. Musical Theatre in Performance
• 2007 Tony Award – Lea Mechele, et. Al. – Spring Awakening
• 2008 – Passing Strange
• 2011 Tony Awards – Sutton Foster - Anything Goes
• 2013 Tony Awards – Neil Patrick Harris – Make it Bigger

12. Chapter 2: The Text
Major Questions
• Use Aristotle’s six elements to analyze a contemporary work of
theatrical fiction. How do they function? Do they still have value?
• Compare a contemporary comedy to an ancient comedy. What are
the similarities and differences? Look at structure, characters, etc.
• Identify three melodramas and compare how each follows or
breaks the “rules” of melodrama.
• Use Aristotle’s six elements to analyze a nontraditional text (a
painting, five minutes on Wescoe Beach, your favorite outfit.) How
do each of these elements highlight this nonlinear text?