Reflective Essay On Drama

"Gin and guns—either one is bad enough, but together they get you in a dickens of a mess, don 't they."—Accused murderer Belva Gaertner, 1924 (National Geographic, N.D)

Warm up your vocal cords because you’re going to want to sing along to this youth theatre company’s musical revue. The performance showcases a wide range of music – from energetic group numbers to stirring ballads that will have you weeping in your hanky. Whether you enjoy new smash hits like Hamilton and Dear Evan Hansen or classics like A Chorus Line and Hairspray, there’s something sure to please everyone.

The year is 1984. Ronald Reagan has just been re-elected by a landslide, including many votes from disaffected liberals. Yuppie culture fuels a high consumption economy. Tom Brokaw is now sole anchor of NBC’s Nightly News. Michael Jackson dominates the Grammys. McDonald’s debuts the McNugget. And Glengarry Glen Ross opens on Broadway. Because Glengarry Glen Ross is so inherently American, it’s hard to believe that it actually didn’t premiere in the United States, but at the National Theatre in London, to wildly successful reviews, before moving to Broadway the following year, where it ran for eleven months, and won the Pulitzer Prize.

This theory looks at how we present ourselves in social situations in terms of our identity.

Ancient Greek Theater is the first historical record of “drama,” which is the Greek term meaning “to do” or “to act.” Beginning in the 5th century BC, Greek Theater developed into an art that is still used today. During the golden age of the Athenians plays were created, plays that are considered among the greatest works of world drama. Today there are thousands of well-known plays and films based on the re-make of ancient drama.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” William Shakespeare may have written these words in As You Like It in 1600, but Erving Goffman truly defined the phrase with his dramaturgical theory. Dramaturgical analysis is the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. Unlike actors though, who use a script telling them how to behave in every scene, real life human interactions change depending upon the social situation they are in. We may have an idea of how we want to be perceived, and may have the foundation to make that happen. But we cannot be sure of every interaction we will have throughout the day, having to ebb and flow with the conversations and situations as they happen.

Sure, it won’t matter in the long run when the next person messes up, but for the time being that you are front page news, it sucks. Rumors and lies and nonstop questions are all you hear. Some people have built their lives on making others feel horrible through drama! Of course you were expecting this, this is the one true factor that is portrayed correctly in movies. What’s incorrectly portrayed is the happy ending at the end of all the drama. That usually doesn’t happen. What happens is, you try your best to avoid the whole situation.

Musical theater has always been something I looked at in a positive light because it was somewhere I could be who I wanted to be, and I could play different people. There are many reasons as to why I have chosen to go into theater as a career and they include the freedom to create characters, the chance to meet new and exciting people, and the opportunity to get up on stage every night and give a performance. The possibilities are endless as to what can happen in theater, and sometimes people get lucky enough to live their dream.

The summer of 2015 was spent on doing a play at Kelsey theater and going on vacation with family to Canada, India, Germany and Italy. The theater act was memorable because I had one of my longest lead role which required me to depict emotional ups and down, humor, exasperation and frustration all at the same time. Getting into the character was proving difficult as the personality that I was impersonating was totally different from mine. I spent hours trying to perfect the emotion and dialogues. I recorded myself, watching and improving while taking inputs from others. The play helped me see things from someone else’s point of view. The vacations after this event was a welcome change where I experienced the cultural diaspora, regional food

The theatrical plays of “Angels in America” and “August: Osage County” both of the playwrights create a heart wrenching, tear jerking, and amazing work. Each character is developed to have its own sets of values, beliefs, and attitudes towards life and so there are no two characters alike. With each character having its own identity, it brings a sense of excitement and unpredictability in the plays. Tracy Letts the writer for “August: Osage County” establishes a sense of reality in his play by developing characters that everyone can relate too. His play is about family, the use of drugs, cancer, and suicide, subjects that people go through during their lifetime. Tony Kushner the playwright of “Angels in America” provides the same feeling

The center I chose to observe was the dramatic play center which is a kitchen. I chose this center because because it's a great way to observe children. The purpose of the dramatic play center is to help develop social, emotional and oral language skills. It gives children a chance to assign roles, self regulate when having to take turns and during all of this children are developing language skills.

     "The arts of the western world have been largely dominated by the artistic standards established by the Greeks of the classical period" (Spreloosel 86). It is from the Greek word theatron, meaning a place for sitting, that we get our word theater. According to James Butler, "The Greeks were the first people to erect special structures to bring audiences and theatrical performers together" (27). "The theaters were normally located near a populated area at the bottom of or cut out of a carefully selected, sloping hillside overlooking a seascape, a plain, or a city" (Butler 30). "They eventually with few exceptions consisted of three distinct parts: theatron

Despite the claim that Drama in Education ( DIE) as a pedagogy dimmed its popularity in the Western world since 1990 until 2016 (Gallagher, et al. , 2017), in the year of 2011, Morrow, et al. included it as one of the best practices in literacy instruction. Some of the teachers who had the experience of trying process drama in their classrooms found that the pedagogy improved students’ participations, pushed students to use their imaginations, performed deeper understanding of the topics being learned and made the students learn to have empathy ( Long, 1998). Do the voices from the classroom resemble to what researchers and theories have to say on process drama?

Ever since I took drama classes in high school I felt that we always put on an act. A show almost, that we put out for the people we interact with daily. Erving Goffman, “Canadian-American Sociologist” (Encyclopedia In., 2017) also believed this, he compared social interactions to the theater, where individuals take a particular role. According to Goffman this “theatrical metaphor consists of a stage, actors, and an audience” (Crossman, 2014). It also consists of the onstage, backstage and offstage. These three stages show different behavior on a person.

     There have been many dramatic plays over the centuries. Many of these plays have died in their time, while others have lived on. What makes these plays endure time and continue to be influential over time? Perhaps it is the storyline or the interesting nature of the play is what makes these dramas last. I think that it is the focus on human nature and its essential truths that keep these plays alive. Most of the plays, still enacted in theaters today, deal with social issues that people can learn from and relate to.