Others Modes of Drama

Others Modes of Drama

Drama, The World and Imitation

Drama is an imitation of our life, world and the society. Drama imitates our world. Dramatic imitation is true to life by being false to our conventional notion of reality. It means dramatic imitation is just like the imitation of worlds and universe in the globe. Globe is true to the world but false to the notion of the reality of the world because it is not the real world but an imaginative imitation of the world. In the same way, dramatic plot and characters are true to our life but can’t be seen and found the character in reality. For example, the suffering of Othello, the jealousy of Iago, gullibility of Othello etc can be found in real human life but such characters can never be found in real life. There was not real Othello and Iago. Moreover, dramatic imitation is a special mode of imitation because it cannot imitate every part of our life. Drama is limited by time and space so time and space draw the boundary and limitation in drama and its specialization generates various types of drama like tragedy, comedy, romance and satire, tragic comedy, absurdist drama, naturalist drama , farce etc.

Tragicomedy

Each of the primary modes- tragedy, comedy, satire and romance embodies its own unique pattern of dramatic experience. Many modern plays especially do not arouse such a clear cut responses tragedy and comedy or satire and romance do have. When we read or witness these type of play our feelings and judgment may will be confused or ambiguous or even mixed one way another. We may experience alienation or isolation, we find such experience or feeling even we don’t know clearly, what we feel and what we think. We discover the play itself has been designed to leave us in an unresolved state of mind. It does not embody clear cut patterns of catastrophe or rebirth. Tragedy and comedy present images of good and evil that is romance and satire .This combination of different or opposing modes of dramatic experience has been described by the term tragicomedy. It often leaves us in uncertain position of life itself. This uncertainty nature of human existence is the fundamental source of the tragicomedy we find in many modern and contemporary plays.

Naturalism or naturalistic drama

A theatrical style sometimes called realism it began as a rebellion against the romantic artificialities of much 19th-century theatre. In the later part of 19^th century, the search for accuracy in historical plays and changes in philosophy also contribute to the development of a realistic drama. Emile Zola preached the doctrine of naturalism demanding that drama avoids the artificiality of convoluted plot and origin a drama of natural cycle like action.

A moment in theatre, film, literature that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality as oppose to such movements as romanticism or surrealism. The naturalistic drama which replicates real life and shows the realistic version of it. Stanislavski developed naturalistic acting as he wanted his actors to become emotionally and psychologically involved with their roles in order to create a convincing realistic performance. Actors live their role they are playing. In naturalistic plays characters are as complicated as life itself such difficulties are naturalistic plays. Naturalism is a deliberate kind of realism in plays, stories, novels usually involving a view of human beings as a passive victim of natural forces or heredity and social environment ; for example Auguste Strindberg ‘Miss Julie’.

Absurdism

It is a term used in absurdist drama in 20th-century philosophers. Characters a man is lost in the world all his actions become senseless, useless, that is no logic and rationality. Absurdist drama tends to eliminate much of the cause and effect relationship among incidents reduce language to a game and minimize its communicative power , reduce characters to archetypes, make place non-specific and view the world as alienating and incomprehensible. The absurdist movement grew out of existentialism, a postwar French philosophy that demanded that the individual face the emptiness of the universe and creates meaning in a life that has no essential meaning within itself.

Absurdist theatre

The critic Martin Iselin coined the term “theatre of absurd’’ when observing the work of Samuel Beckett because some of his plays have no actors on stage, some have little or no plot and others have no words. The theatre of absurd assumes the world is meaningless, that meaning is the human concept and that individual must create significance and not rely on institution or traditionalism to provide it. Samuel Beckett influenced by Brecht and accepts his audience to analyze the drama not sits back and merely be entertained. ‘Endgame’.

Melodrama

Melodrama is originated from the early 19th-century French word melodrama which is derived from Greek Melos which mean music and French drame which means drama. For example ‘The perils of Pauline’,’ Broken blossoms’. Melodrama is a kind of drama having a musical accompaniment to intensify the effect of certain scenes. A drama shows plenty in romantic sentiment and agonizing situations like thrilling and pathetic. It is a dramatic work that exaggerates plots and characters by using eventual music in order to appeal to the emotion often with strongly stereotyped characters. In dramas of the 19^th century when orchestra music or songs were used to accompany the action. Melodrama is a drama of disaster but different from tragedy. It forces outside of the protagonists cause all of the significant events of the plot. All of the aspects of related guilt or responsibility of the protagonists is removed as he is the victim of circumstances which is acted upon by the antagonists and suffers without having to accept responsibility and inevitability of fate. The strict moral judgment resolves the issue and good characters are rewarded and bad characters are punished.

Tragedy

As Aristotle defines tragedy as an imitation of an action that is serious having complete form in a dramatic form. It imitates serious actions and subject pattern matter that happen in everyday life. Its language arouses pity and fear in the audience. Its birth is the imitation of a human. Human beings are the most imitative creatures in the world. Imitation is helpful for them in two ways. First, they learn by imitation and second they get pleasure in imitation.

Therefore, the most important elements of tragedy are suffering. Aristotle says that a tragedy most includes great suffering especially the suffering. Similarly, the characters most have an error of judgment. It leads towards the tragic downfall of main characters. The tragedy is out of the imagination of common people. Finally, Aristotle says that a good tragedy must have catharsis and Hamartia. Catharsis is the perfect satisfaction of watching the drama. Hamartia means the tragic fall of a hero. It is the serious weakness of the tragic hero. These are the most importance part of the good tragedy. Similarly, as Aristotle says that the best tragedy should have basic elements. A tragedy that most have unity of plot and action. Here it means that tragedy must have a single plot and all the minor action must be related to the same major actions. He says that a good tragedy should not be related to the same major actions. He says that a good tragedy should not have multiple plots. Multiple plots weaken the effects. All the minor action should enforce the same plot. All the action in the tragedy must represent one action, a complete whole with its several incidents so closely only then tragedy can be turn out to the best one.

Reference-

Klaus, C. H. (2013). New York: Oxford University Press.