Genres of theatre
Theatre is a branch of the per-forming arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, mime, puppets, music, dance, sound and spectacle.
There are many different genres of theatre available for us to watch. Whether you want to visit a musical theatre to witness a story told through song, dance and speech or an opera theatre to listen to a story being sung, the choices are unlimited.
There are too many genres of theatre to name them all but the main ones that people go to theatres to see are: musical theatre, drama, opera, comedy, tragedy, etc. Musical theatre: Is a theatre where you will hear and see a story told through the performance of singing, speech and dance. Music and theatre have had a close relationship since ancient times. Modern musical theatre is a form of theatre that combines music, spoken dialogue, and dance.
Some of the major musical productions that people have been going to see in recent times include musicals such as Cats and The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber; My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Hair which have played all over the world.
Opera: Is a genre of theatre where a story is told through singing. Opera, a classical art originating in Italy early in the 16th century, takes great stories often from the world’s dramatic literature, and sets them to music. Some of the best known Opera singers today include Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, Spanish tenors Placido Domingo and José Carreras. This trio makes up the Three Tenors who are responsible for producing the best selling classical album, 'In Concert' by The Three Tenors.
Rock opera: Same style as opera, except that the musical form is rock music.
Drama: Is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. Drama was born in the mid-eighteenth century and portrays the trials of ordinary people. Drama refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy.
The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action". Drama in theatre is performed by actors on a stage before an audience. The tragedy “Hamlet” by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles are among the masterpieces of the art of drama.
Comedy: Is a genre of theatre where humour is used to tell a story. It is a play about ordinary people, written in a style that is amusing, and has a happy ending. Comedy was born in Athens, shortly after tragedy.
Tragedy: Is opposed to comedy. Tragedy was born in the sixth century BC, when the Athenians invented theatre. A tragedy is a play about suffering and death of a person of high rank (a king, a mythological hero) who confronts a situation from which there is no escape. In England in Shakespeare’s time, and in France in the age of Corneille and Racine, playwrights adapted the concept of tragedy to their own cultures.
Words & Expressions:
spectacle – зрелище
a performance – представление
to portray – изображать
a masterpiece - шедевр
humour – юмор
to amuse – развлекать
a playwright - драматург
Exercise. Read and translate the words:
theatre, genre, art, audience, combination, gesture, mime, unlimited, album, fiction, term, actor, style, concept.
Questions:
What genres of theatre are there?
What genre is the oldest?
What theatrical genre do you prefer? And why?
What famous playwrights do you know?
Have you seen any play by English writer?
“The only way to see the value
of a play is to see it acted.”