An example is, “Too Much Punch for Judy.” People are, in essence, all idiots. Makes a good
companion of satire.
Epic Theatre
Examples include The Comedy of Errors by
A style that was popularised by Bertolt Brecht. Shakespeare and Fawlty Towers, starring John
Cleese.
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 Feminist Theatre
from [epic theatre]: the engendering of
illusion." Plays that are written by women, for women
and about women.
Techniques include:
They deal with women’s issues such as birth,
• Alienation (Verfremdungseffekt) women’s rights, motherhood and female
friendships.
• Comedy
It followed the political feminist movement of
• Minimal set design 1968, but became more subtle due to a
redefining of the word ‘feminism’ as equality
• Gestus and stereotypes
became more prevalent in the late 20th and
• Music early 21st Century.
(From www.hsc.csu.edu.au) “Depicts the real and often trashy side of life.”
• families and honest banter between Usually have a political or societal message.
family members
• a bleak, often sorrowful and nihilistic Examples are Coronation Street and
landscape Shameless, which, by extension, doesn’t say
• idiosyncratic rhythms of speech,
different dialects and unusual sentence Melodrama
construction
• honest, good, entertaining humour Apparently so bad that most of the world were
• naturalistic settings, such as a kitchen, trying to make new versions of Theatre (See
often in an impoverished household or Naturalism and Epic Theatre).
a bar
• a general fondness for alcohol Involves the heavy use of music to denote
• real action e.g. baking soda bread, usually one dimensional character types. For
making tea, putting away shopping, example, a hero would enter to the sound of
pulling a beer … trumpets, while the villain would enter to the
• dysfunctional families
sound of ominous chords.
• a strong tradition of storytelling
• a ghost scene The emotions and plot / action are
• lively music, poetry and/or dance, even
emphasized, rather than the characters, like in
the music of Irish speech patterns
• an element of magic a drama.
• representations of family breakdowns
Contains “a limited number of stock
• Unionism and other divisions in political
and religious beliefs characters: the hero, the villain, the heroine,
• memory an old man, an old woman, a comic man and a
• love comic woman engaged in a sensational plot
• the courage of one’s convictions featuring themes of love and murder. Often
• wit and pain the good but not very clever hero is duped by
• the dream to break away from the 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
As realistic as possible, so no magic, spoken in Began with Henrik Ibsen and was largely
prose etc. developed by Stanislavski.