II. Performing Arts Review

MUSIC

Music can be thought of as organized sounds. Our culture has many different types of music, and there are various types of music from cultures all over the world. We usually classify our music in three categories:

1. Popular music is professionally composed, recorded, or performed live and represents the type of music of most current interest to the public;

2. Classical music was composed in the past and, while it is also recorded for sale, is usually performed by large orchestras in “symphony” halls;

3. Folk music usually has a rural origin, is usually not composed professionally, and is often transmitted by oral tradition.

Music consists of pitch, the actual frequency or sound of a note, and duration. A tone has a specific pitch and duration. Different tones occurring simultaneously are called chords.

Harmony is chords with duration. A melody is the tones that produce the distinctive sound of the music. Rhythm in our music refers primarily to the regularity of beats or meter. The most com­mon meter in our music has four beats with an emphasis on the first beat. Pitches separated by specific intervals are called a scale. Most music is based on the dia­tonic scale found on the piano white keys (C, D, E, F, G, A, B). The chromatic scale includes the seven notes of the diatonic scale with the five sharps and flats corresponding to the white and black keys on the piano. Think of the piano. The piano represents the chromatic scale with groups of seven white keys and five black keys. Music is played using tones from this scale for varying durations. Usually the melody consists of one note at a time and is played with the right hand. Harmony usually consists of chords and is played with the left hand. The rhythm of the music reflects the meter, and the arrangements and duration of notes.

Form refers to the overall structure of music. Patterns or sections of a musical may repeat or all parts of the pieces may be unique. Phrases or sections in a musical piece may complement one another or they may contrast.

Dynamics describes how loud or how soft the music is. The dynamic aspects of a musical add to its expressive qualities. Terms such as pianissimo (play very softly) are used to refer to musical dynamics.

Tempo refers to the speed of a musical work. The tempo of a piece may vary in different sections of the piece to provide contrast and alert the listener to the various meanings that sections are meant to convey.

Texture refers to the “feel” the musical work imparts. Terms such as staccato (choppy) are used to describe the texture of a musical work.

Timbre describes the unique sound produced by different instruments, instrumental combinations and by the human voice. Families of instruments such as woodwinds (clarinet, saxophone) and horns (trumpet, trombone) have similar timbres.

Musical Notation uses a staff to represent notes. The clef placed at the beginning of the staff determines the pitches for each line and space on the staff. Notes are written on the staff using the following notation. A flat lowers the note a half tone while a sharp raises the note a half tone. The natural cancels a flat or sharp. Rests indicate a time when no music is played. A note followed by a dot is increased in value by half.

The staff is partitioned into measures. The sum of the values of the notes in any measure equals 1. A key signature of sharps and/or flats can be written at the beginning of a staff to change these notes throughout the piece.

A time signature is written at the beginning of each staff. The top number shows how many beats per measure and the bottom number shows which note gets a beat.

Until recently, music was created by the human voice or by instruments. One typical classifi­cation of musical instruments follows:

1. Percussion instruments are played by being struck. Bell, drum, gong, piano, symbol, and xylophone are examples;

2. Brass instruments have traditionally been made from “brass” or some other metal and are played by vibrating the lips against the mouthpiece. French horn, trombone, trumpet, and tuba are examples;

3. Woodwinds are played by blowing. Most woodwinds have reeds while a few, such as the flute, do not. Bassoon, clarinet, flute, oboe, and saxophone are examples;

4. Stringed instruments are played by plucking or drawing a bow across the strings. Notes are formed by holding the strings down while plucking or bowing. Cello, guitar, viola, and violin are examples.

This century saw the development of electronically produced music. In the past few decades, computers and other devices have been able to replicate exactly the sounds of almost every instrument. Today, a person can compose a musical piece on a computer and have the computer play that music using a full array of musical sounds without ever picking up an instrument. The full impact of this electronic music is yet to be realized.

DANCE. TYPES OF DANCE

Dance means an intentional movement designed to express a thought, image, feeling, or reality. A dance is a sequential, rhythmic movement in two or three dimensional space. A dance has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Dance medium refers to the types of movement used during dance, including space, shape, force, and time. Space refers to the outer space or sphere immediately around the body, and inner space, the real or imaginary space inside the body. Shape is the deliberate positioning of the body to create a particular appearance. Force is release of energy. Force is the energy that produces a dance. Time refers to tempo, beat, and accent during a dance.

Creative movement refers to children’s dance movement, which is more exploratory and less purposeful than adult dance. Body movements during a dance may be locomotor or non-locomotor.

Kinesthetic perception describes the body’s ability to sense movement. It refers to the muscles’ retention of the movement and effort required to produce a dance.

Dancing means to move in a dance-like way. Choreography refers to the art of composing dances. A dance style describes the kind of dance associated with a particular style, location, or time period. There are several types of dance including ballet, tap, jazz, and modern. Improvisation refers to an unplanned dance. Man has a natural inclination to dance; therefore, dance has always maintained a place in social and cultural history. The story of dance in theatre includes ballet, modern, ethnic, jazz, and tap dance.

Ballet, though born in the Italian Renaissance courts, has always been a mainstay of American theatrical dance. For instance, the ladies dance en pointe-that is the ladies dance in special shoes that allows them to dance on the tips of their toes. A Russian American named George Balanchine was the founder of the New York City Ballet. He appreciated long lines and fluid movements. Prior to his work in the musical On Your Toes in 1937, dance in theatre was han­dled by dance directors who created and oversaw dance routines on stage. George Balanchine insisted that he be called a choreographer for that show, and the term has been used since.

The mother of modern dance was Isadora Duncan. She danced barefoot and in ancient Greek dress. Following Isadora Duncan was Martha Graham. Rebelling against ballet, Ms. Graham, whose dance was rooted in muscle tension and relaxation, taught her dancers to be more grounded to the earth.

Flat feet, bent elbows and knees, are characteristics of modern dance. The man who wrote his own vocabulary of theatre dance was Bob Fosse (Pippin, Cabaret). Bob Fosse’s dance style leaned heavily into jazz, and it is said he got his “wicked sense of humor” from Jack Cole. Mr. Fosse turned the dancers’ movements inward with short bursts of energy and specific small movements such as a hip thrust or a bowler hat dip. He gave musical theatre a style of dance that was unique to that art form and that was steeped in the jazz tradition.

Dance and theatre cannot be complete without reference to tap dance. Tap, like musical theatre, is a true American art form. Tap was born out of the serendipitous confluence of the three particular cultural dance styles of Irish clogging, African rhythms, and the English hornpipe in the Five Point’s district of New York. The Irish clogging gave tap its heavy footwork, the English hornpipe gave tap its bell kicks and upper body movement, all set to the syncopated rhythms of the African drums.

DRAMA AND THEATER

As used here, drama means the reenactment of life situations. Drama emphasizes the participant and does not require an audience. Theater involves an audience. Theater is a more formal presentation that may include a script, sets, acting, directing, and producing.

A script is a written description of a play or other performance. The script tells actors what to say, where to stand, and how to enter and leave a stage. Actors are the participants in a play or presentation. Playmaking means creating an original story and structuring, perform­ing, and evaluating the presentation without a formal audience.

Acting includes the skills of speaking, movement, and sensory awareness. Acting requires preparation and rehearsal before presentation to the audience. Acting may also involve improvisation in which actors create their own spontaneous presentation in response to a problem or some other stimulus.

Production means to arrange for a theater performance. Producers coordinate all the technical aspects of the theater presentation. Producers may be concerned with the overall presentation or with technical aspects within a presentation. Direction means to coordinate the on-stage activities. Directors help actors practice and are concerned with the actual on-stage presentation.

DRAMATIC AND THEATRICAL FORMS

The following are some selected dramatic/theatrical forms and characteristics:

Comedy.Comes from the Greek word komos which means to celebrate or to make merry. It denotes a focus on a problem or situation that leads to crisis, but resolves into a happy ending;

Dark comedy. A comedic form that usually crosses or toys with the line of good taste and decency. It finds humor in placing something funny in a morbid situation;

Tragedy. A type of drama that explores the story of a protagonist as he or she comes up against a difficult situation which leads to a sorrowful end;

Farce. A form of comedy that relies on stereotyped characters, improbable situations, and usually lots of doors;

Melodrama. A theatrical form that is chiefly characterized by a consistent musical underscoring that sets the tone of the show. This genre uses stock villains attempting to exploit a stock victim that is rescued by a stock hero who sees that the villain gets his comeuppance;

Commedia dell’arte. An ancient theatrical genre of Italian origin that was based on specific, titled, stock characters in situations that were outlined but improvised;

Opera. A theatrical genre that is fully sung throughout. The themes of the stories tend to be very large and emotional. The quality of the music and the voice is the most important aspect of this art form;

Musical theatre. A theatrical genre created in the United States in which the story is conveyed not only via the spoken word but also via music, song, and dance;

Pantomime. Characterized by performers who make no verbal sound, this discipline uses body language and physical movement to tell the story;

Improvisation. The process of creating a story on the spot with only the smallest amount of direction or parameters. It depends entirely on the creativity of the performers and the product of their interaction.

ASPECTS OF THEATER PERFORMANCE

Theatre is a collaborative art form encompassing all technical as well as creative fields within the discipline. The blending of props, costumes, make-up, hair, sets, sound, and lighting create what Aristotle called in his classical treatise The Poetics, spectacle. Spectacle is the overall image of a theatrical production. Technical areas of theatre are actual areas of study and are jobs held by individuals referred to as designers (that is, costume designer, lighting designer, scenic designer, sound designer, and prop designer, who is normally called the prop master). These designers with their staffs work collaboratively with the director to realize the director’s vision for the play. By using these technical elements to enhance the production, the story being told can be more readily understood, and the theme more apparent to the audience:

1. Costumes. Historically, costumes, which include make-up and hair, were used for ceremonial occasions and events. In the past, the rituals of shamans, Native American annual dances, and commedia dell-arte plays were reasons for performers to don costumes. Today, liturgical robes, weddings, and college graduations still reflect the need for ceremonial costumes. Costume, make-up, and hair are not only ceremonial in nature but can denote the actor’s character. Costumes allow audiences a means to enter into the world created by the characters on stage. Costumes can reflect the character’s rank in society, economic status, and emotional disposition. Costumes also reflect the world of the show;

2. Props. All elements of the production that are carried on and off stage, sometimes by actors, sometimes by stage hands, are props. Props are as diverse as a walking cane, a knitting basket, a shopping cart, or a book. While costumes can be an entry way for the audience into the nature of the characters on stage, props can actually be one of the means for actors to understand their characters. Thus, when the character picks up the prop in the production, the cane is handled with this endowed sense of history helping to realize a three-dimensional character on stage;

3. Lighting. The earliest forms of plays were more often than not performed during the day and commonly outside to capture and manipulate the light from the sun. As artificial light sources became available, plays began to move indoors and could be performed at any hour. Lighting has always been an important element of theatrical productions. The Greeks actually oriented their outdoor amphitheaters to capture the rays of light and timed productions to end climatically with fire burning against the setting sun. Early forms of light also included oil lamps, torches, and lanterns. The invention of gaslight, and eventually the development of incandescent lighting, precipitated our modern use of stage lighting. Today lighting can define space, direct the audience’s focus, imitate natural light, create atmosphere, and denote the passage of time. Most importantly, lighting can be magical: from moving lights streaming across the stage, to stars twinkling above the audience;

4. Sets. Scenery is relatively new as early theatrical productions needed only exits, entrances, acting platforms, or decorative backdrops. With the advent of indoor staging and lighting, opportunities arose for the expansion of scenic design. Scenery is usually realistic or metaphoric. Realistic scenery places the audience into the world of the play as envisioned by the director and realized by the scenic designer. Metaphoric scenery usually emphasizes a deeper connection to the theme of the play in visual images or in an abstract manner. Sets included the construction of backdrops, furniture, walls, painting, drapery, and landscaping all combined to create an appropriate representation of the world of the play, whether real or metaphoric;

5. Sound Although the design aspect of sound is relatively new, attention to sound has been important in theatre since its beginning. Amphitheatres in Greece and Rome had megaphones built into actors’ masks to amplify their voices. Because theatre is a communicative art form, it must be heard either through actors’ voices, music, special effects, or soundscapes. Soundscapes in a play can include such sounds as crickets chirping, wind whispering through the trees, a babbling brook, a light rain fall, or musical underscoring. Sound, as used in theater, is the artificial enhancement of actors, orchestras, and real-life noises to complete the story that is being told on the stage.

Theatre is a communicative art form. There needs to be an audience who can hear, see, or both, the story /events of the performance as communicated by the performers through movement/action. To enrich the experience for the audience, actors need to perfect their instruments through specific training. Their instruments are the actors themselves; their voice, body, presence, and their ability to control them. Actors receive training in diction, voice, gesture, and movement so that they might create realistic three-dimensional characters on stage.

Language is what the playwright gives the actor in the text of the script. The study of that language (the script) gives to the actor clues to his or her character’s emotions, state of mind, objective, social status, relationships, economic status, mood and more. To begin the study of the playwright’s language, the actor needs to read the script three times; the first time for the pure enjoyment of the play, the second time to focus on the actor’s part and listen to what the character actually says, and the third time to determine what the other characters of the play say about the actor’s character. This simple reading exercise reveals what is called the “given circumstances” of the play, or, rather, the world and situation within which the character lives in the play. Through language the actor learns the who, what, when, where, and why of his or her character.

The actor should pay attention to the kind of language the character uses as well. An upper-crust English gentleman who graduated from an Ivy League university would speak differently than a poor country farmer who had no formal education past fourth grade.

Body The actor must be in control of his/her body. The actor’s body must have strength, stamina, dexterity, and coordination, as well as training in specific movement skills such as ballet, fencing, stage combat, mime, gesture, and period movement. Ultimately, the goal of the actor is to have total voice-body integration and coordination. This integration of speech and movement is what makes for effective actors with fully realized characters on stage.

When we study the earliest history of theatre, we quickly realize that there are no true records of early theatrical endeavors. However, we can draw inferences as to what these endeavors may have been like from what few remains we can discover archeologically and from what we still participate in today. Our conjecture leads us to three theories:

• Ritual/myth;

• Storytelling;

• Dance/imitation.

Ritual and/or myth can be explained in the need for a summons and a response. Around spring, participants summoned the rain gods in the hopes that the heavens would open up and pour rain upon the ground in a response. They painted green stripes on their faces, and after a time of chanting and possibly smoking a communal pipe, they summoned the gods to bring the rain. They expected a response that would have brought plenty of rain for the village’s crops. As the years moved along, this summons and response continued by means of what we commonly refer to as a rain dance. Eventually the ceremonial aspects of the process became more important than the response. Every spring the commu­nity pulled out their best clothes (costumes), performed the same dance their ancestors did (choreography), and used the same tools and equipment in the performance as they did in previous years (props). This performance continued year after year whether they needed the rain or not. Why? Because during the ritual, the girls looked pretty, the men looked virile, and the event was what was important. Every spring, some humans continued the performance ritual although it took on different names throughout history from pagan times to modern day (May Day).

It is believed that storytelling can be traced to the hunter-gatherer age. Imagine, if you will, a roaring village bonfire where the participants are cooking the spoils of their latest hunt. The hunters share long tales of adventure about the hunt while one young hunter tells his particular hunting story. The bear he speaks about is a particular size, and the hunt somewhat precarious, but the hunt is successful. Next year, after the hunt, while sitting around the fire, our young hunter is asked to again recount that story from last year. This time the story may grow in danger and the bear in size. The following year yet again our young hunter-now grown a bit older-is encouraged to tell that story about the bear during the hunt. To increase the enjoyment of the story our hunter asks a boy to play the part of the bear while he himself will portray the hunter. Each year thereafter the story is retold, acted out again and again because it is a good story; it is fun, and it gives the audience aesthetic pleasure. Theatre tells stories. This bear hunt story is no different than the story told by a weekend fisherman today about “the fish that got away.” The story has a beginning, a middle, and an end; it may include props; it may include others; and it becomes more and more elaborate in the telling.

As mentioned before, man has a natural inclination to dance. Small children, babies who can barely stand-let alone walk-will bounce and sway when music is played. We have no reason to believe that early man was any different in his inclination to dance. Perhaps this early form of dance was to imitate physical behavior of animals and/or humans, donning skins as garments to represent animals and eventually adding dialogue to the human characters for a more complete theatrical event. This imitation or impersonation, which continued throughout the history of theatre, is the very foundation, in fact, the single most important aspect of theatre.

Drama and theater provides a natural basis for reflection and evaluation. The following criteria can be used to reflect on and evaluate a dramatic work. Intent is the reason for a drama or theater work. The intent reflects the objective or purpose for presenting the work. Structure is the relationship among the different components of a dramatic work. These components include, but are not limited to, balance, coherence, conflict, contrast, emphasis, harmony, rhythm, stress, and transition. Effectiveness refers to the impact of the dramatic work on the audience. An audience may be affected in many ways by a work including being amused, elated, informed, interested, or moved. Worth refers to the value of the work itself. That is, it refers to the amount of insight knowledge, or wisdom found in a work.

POST-READING ACTIVITIES