Essay on Theatre Classification

Intro to Theater made so much impact to my perception to theater. First, I thought theater is all about music and stage design, Broadway is a theater along the main street of New York City, and theater is all about drama and fantasy. But, after attending the course I realized I was wrong about the real definition of theater.

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The theater is not just play and musical, theater is about delivering the story through an action or a series of action to the audience. Theater can be delivered through Opera, Dance (Paul Taylor Dance Company), Music (The Phantom of The Opera) and Theater (Sweat, Endgame, and The Plays That Goes Wrong).

I realized Broadway is not just Main Street of New York City but also can be a classification of the capacity of the theater. Broadway is a theater that had at least 500 seats. A theater that has between 99 and 499 seats is an Off-Broadway theater. However, 98 or fewer seats are Off-Off-Broadway theaters.

Broadway or any other kind of theater is not only about fantasy and drama; throughout the course I saw the different forms of genre of theater. Tragedy a suffering of the character due to the unexpected event, Sweat is the perfect example of the play with the tragedy occurs to the characters, after losing job from the factory I saw the start of the rising action of the play. They became violent and jealous to one another.

Comedy is humorous, less tragic, ludicrous and sometimes absurd. Plays That Goes Wrong was a comedy play about the murder mystery, but the idea is pure comedy and continues disaster of set like, props falling from the wall, floor collapsing, cast forgetting lines and at the end whole set collapse.

Tragicomedy - is the most lifelike of all of the genres. It is non-judgmental and ends with no absolutes. It focuses on character relationships, and there is a mix of comedy and tragedy side by side in these types of plays. A Dollhouse, Part 2 is a play I can think with tragicomedy. We didnt see the play in class, but after reading the playbook by Henry Ibsen, I was curious what happened to Nora? We had such a good discussion that day, and suddenly during the semester break the part 2 became available to Broadway, and I watched it. At the start of the play, there is a knock at the door. The knocked door was slummed more than a decade ago when Nora got out of A Dollhouse. Nora has come back, and it is the one who is slumming the door. Nora became a successful feminist writer after leaving her children, husband and the nursemaid. Writing incendiary books about women much like herself, she went back to finalize her divorce because her identity was being questioned, the family had a perception that she was probably dead. However, the play was funny, and the language is way simple than the first book.

During the course, the play that gave me an impact was the American Sign Language play. The film was about the bestselling childrens book, the giving tree by Shel Silverstein. The story of a female tree and boy, where the boy enjoys playing with the apple tree, climbing her trunk, swinging from her branches, and eating her apples. The poem showed the transformation of being a boy, young adult and old men. At the end, the boy who becomes old men returns to the tree and ask for a place to sit. This play was a challenge because theres only one character, no props, no special effect, and the character use only her hand and facial expression to deliver the story. I question myself why this performance considered as theater play? And professor answer all you need for a theatrical experience is an actor, a character, and an audience.

Overall, Theater teaches us how to be ourselves by expressing our feeling, emotion, and through writing the review, we expressed our opinion whether we like the play or not. This course teaches us the history, from Shakespeare, Henry Ibsen, and Samuel Beckett. Through the lecture, history come alive right before our eyes. Theater makes learning about history fun. Intro to theater makes us understand the Society, after watching the Castle and Sweat I realized how fortunate we are, and how our justice system in America works.

In the end, Intro to Theater thought me to appreciate the art before I am not a theater goer person, but during this semester I confess, I saw Miss Saigon, In Transit, A Doll House Part 2, Glass of Menagerie, Nollywood Dream (off-off-Broadway) Pacific Overtures, and Chicago (Crespy, 23). Through this class, I discovered a new voice, a love of theater. Theater inspires me to listen, understand the story and to LOVE the Theater. Just like the last the song from the first acapella plays in Broadway In Transit Getting There.

And this is what it feels like to be hereAnd to be happy in the momentAnd getting there

Works cited

Crespy, David Allison. Off-Off-Broadway Explosion: How Provocative Playwrights of the 1960s Ignited a New American Theater. Watson-Guptill Publications, 2003.

Martini, Dwi. An analysis of translation techniques and quality of figurative language in song lyrics in the lion king movie. Diss. SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY, 2015.