Farce

Docudrama A style of comedy.

A dramatisation based around an actual event.
Usually contains or quotes facts and quotes
from actual sources and also embellishments.
Can include any style of theatre.
Involves improbable and ridiculous situations,
disguise, mistaken identity, verbal humour and
a fast paced plot which gradually increases;
usually culminating in a fast chase scene at
the end.

An example is, “Too Much Punch for Judy.”
Epic Theatre
A style that was popularised by Bertolt Brecht.
Its main goal is to make sure that the audience
is always aware that it is watching a play, "It is
most important that one of the main features
of the ordinary theatre should be excluded
from [epic theatre]: the engendering of
illusion."
Techniques include:
• Alienation (Verfremdungseffekt)
• Comedy
• Minimal set design
• Gestus and stereotypes
• Music
People are, in essence, all idiots. Makes a good
companion of satire.
Examples include The Comedy of Errors by
Shakespeare and Fawlty Towers, starring John
Cleese.
Feminist Theatre
Plays that are written by women, for women
and about women.
They deal with women’s issues such as birth,
women’s rights, motherhood and female
friendships.
It followed the political feminist movement of
1968, but became more subtle due to a
redefining of the word ‘feminism’ as equality
became more prevalent in the late 20th and
early 21st Century.

• Breaking the Fourth Wall

The techniques are designed to allow the

usually political or social message of the play
to be as clear as possible.
 Stephen Berkoff

Born in Stepney, East London in 1937.

ff
Uses heavy physical theatre, called “Total
Theatre” – “the language is usually filthy,
characters talk about unmentionable subjects,
take their clothes off, have sex, humiliate each
another, experience unpleasant emotions,
become suddenly violent. At its best, this kind
of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it
forces audiences to react: either they feel like
fleeing the building or they are suddenly
convinced that it is the best thing they have
ever seen, and want all their friends to see it
too. It is the kind of theatre that inspires us to
use superlatives, whether in praise or
condemnation."
Black comedy
A style where taboo subjects are treated with
humour and satire, while retaining the
seriousness.
Makes light of subjects such as rape, murder,
suicide, terminal illness and war.
Came to prominence in America during the
1950’s and 1960’s.
Notable writers of black comedy include
William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Mark Twain and
George Bernard Shaw, among others.

Wrote adaptations of Franz Kafka books,

including “Metamorphosis.”
Tragedy
Actor, usually plays villains.
Regards human suffering as a form of
Commedia Dell’arte
entertainment for an audience.
Originated in Italy.
Originated in Ancient Greece.
Refers to improvised comedy.
Among the most famous tragedies are those
Usually about love or tricks to get money. written by Shakespeare, such as Macbeth,
Othello and Hamlet.
Most plays contained roughly the same
characters. For example, a plotting maid, an Characterised by seriousness and traumatic
old father, a wily servant. events to evoke pity and fear from the
audience.
Masks, stock gestures and catchphrases were
prevalent in this genre. Common use refers to any story with a sad
ending.
The comedy was farcical, and often physical,
with acrobatics.
 Irish Drama
Usually very bleak and pessimistic.
Involves Irish life and history, particularly civil
war and war, and terrorism.
Can involve the departure of a character to
another country.
(From www.hsc.csu.edu.au)
• families and honest banter between
family members
• a bleak, often sorrowful and nihilistic
landscape
• idiosyncratic rhythms of speech,
different dialects and unusual sentence
construction
• honest, good, entertaining humour
• naturalistic settings, such as a kitchen,
often in an impoverished household or
a bar
• a general fondness for alcohol
• real action e.g. baking soda bread,
making tea, putting away shopping,
pulling a beer …
• dysfunctional families
• a strong tradition of storytelling
• a ghost scene
• lively music, poetry and/or dance, even
the music of Irish speech patterns
• an element of magic
• representations of family breakdowns
• Unionism and other divisions in political
and religious beliefs
• memory
• love
• the courage of one’s convictions
• wit and pain
• the dream to break away from the
Kitchen Sink Drama
Created in England.
Set in rougher, poorer parts of England,
usually the North.
Includes common Northern accents.
“Depicts the real and often trashy side of life.”
Usually have a political or societal message.
Examples are Coronation Street and
Shameless, which, by extension, doesn’t say
Melodrama
Apparently so bad that most of the world were
trying to make new versions of Theatre (See
Naturalism and Epic Theatre).
Involves the heavy use of music to denote
usually one dimensional character types. For
example, a hero would enter to the sound of
trumpets, while the villain would enter to the
sound of ominous chords.
The emotions and plot / action are
emphasized, rather than the characters, like in
a drama.
Contains “a limited number of stock
characters: the hero, the villain, the heroine,
an old man, an old woman, a comic man and a
comic woman engaged in a sensational plot
featuring themes of love and murder. Often
the good but not very clever hero is duped by
a scheming villain, who has eyes on the
damsel in distress until fate intervenes at the
end to ensure the triumph of good over evil.”
 Naturalism

Popularised by Constantin Stanislavski .

Realism
Involves the goal of creating an illusion of real
life on stage. Like naturalism, but most of the conflict comes
from human morals and emotional inner
Involves deep, three dimensional and realistic thoughts and beliefs, rather than physical
characters. obstacles.

Detailed, non exotic settings. Moral and inner character conflict.

As realistic as possible, so no magic, spoken in Began with Henrik Ibsen and was largely
prose etc. developed by Stanislavski.

Plots that are realistic.

Involves physical dangers as part of the play’s Theatre of the Absurd

main conflict.
Involves usually flat character archetypes that
are involved in repetitive tasks.

Language can be nonsense, but usually in the

confines of naturalism (not many created
words).

Plots are usually meaningless. Can involve

unresolved mysteries, repetition and clichés
and perhaps an oppression from an outside,
unknown force, as in Harold Pinter’s “The
Birthday Party” or “The Room.” Can be cyclical
(i.e. the end is the beginning is the end) and
can involve absence, or perhaps an
unexplained metamorphosis.

Experimental and surrealistic.

Usually tragicomedy, whereby comedy is used

as well as tragedy elements.