Theatre and Society Exam Questions
Course Introduction
This course examines the dynamic relationship between theatre and society, exploring how theatrical performances both reflect and influence cultural, political, and social movements throughout history. Students will analyze a variety of theatrical traditions and practices from diverse cultures, considering the ways in which theatre has served as a tool for social commentary, resistance, and community engagement. Through readings, performances, and critical discussions, the course will investigate key themes such as identity, power, and representation, fostering an understanding of theatres impact on societal change and its continuing relevance in contemporary issues.
Recommended Textbook
The Art of Theatre Then and Now 4th Edition by William Missouri Downs
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17 Chapters
390 Verified Questions
390 Flashcards
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Theatre, Art, and Entertainment
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which category of theatre is designed to support the heritage,customs,and point of view of a particular people,religion,class,country,or community?
Answer: Cultural theatre
Q2) The Greeks disagreed about the function and purpose of the theatre arts.What were some of their viewpoints,and how are those points of view reflected in today's society?
Answer: The playwright Aristophanes believed that theatre should not only entertain but also offer moral and political direction.Eratosthenes,on the other hand,believed that theatre should only entertain,never instruct.The philosopher Aristotle believed that theatre was meant to interpret the world and awaken the soul,while his mentor Plato saw it as a tool of the state.Student answers will vary.
Q3) This branch of philosophy deals with the nature and expression of beauty.
A)Metaphysics
B)Ethics
C)Politics
D)Aesthetics
E)Epistemology
Answer: D
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Chapter 2: Stage versus Screen
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17 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) What distinguishes the role of the actor in film from that of the theatre?
Answer: Unlike stage actors,screen actors have backups to deal with issues such as stunts; there are no close ups in stage acting,so actors must be expressive with their entire bodies; screen actors have fewer lines than stage actors; and screen actors have the freedom to fail.Student answers will vary.
Q2) Many theatre companies do not have stockholders and pay no dividends or federal taxes.These theatres are known as...
A)Nonspecific theatres
B)Free theatres
C)Profit tomorrow theatres
D)IRS theatres
E)Nonprofit theatres
Answer: E
Q3) Besides ticket sales,name three sources of funding for nonprofit theatres.
Answer: Corporate funding,patrons,and government funding (such as the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA))
Q4) Which type of scriptwriters sells their copyrights?
Answer: Screenwriters
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Theatre of the People
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Sample Questions
Q1) This is an attempt to overcome all forms of discrimination,including racism,sexism,and homophobia,so that people can coexist as well as perhaps achieve a pluralistic society.
A)Multinationalism
B)Enculturation
C)Coexistism
D)Multiculturalism
E)Globalism
Answer: D
Q2) For most of American theatre history,whites wearing heavy "ethnic" makeup acted as African Americans,Native Americans,and Asians.This led to a now discontinued form of theatre in which white people played black people.What name was given to this form of theatre?
A)Cross-cultural theatre
B)Minstrel show
C)Ethnic theatre
D)Whiteface theatre
Answer: B
Q3) ____________ gives voice to groups that privileged cultures ignore or silence.
Answer: Theatre of identity
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Chapter 4: Experiencing and Analyzing Plays
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Sample Questions
Q1) This is the audience's willingness to put aside everyday reality and agree to accept the play's quasi reality.
A)Group dynamics
B)Aesthetic distance
C)Literary appraisal
D)Suspension of disbelief
Q2) According to the authors of your text,there are specific actions that comprise audience etiquette.List five of those.Has audience etiquette changed over the years? If so,in what ways and to what do you attribute those changes?
Q3) In terms of group dynamics,what are characteristics of a live audience in the theatre?How do they differ from movie or television audiences?How does theatre use group dynamics to manipulate the audience?
Q4) This is someone's opinion of a play,which often includes whether it is worth attending.
A)Criticism
B)Assessment
C)Review
D)Aristotelian opinion
Q5) In theatre lingo,what term means to give away lots of free tickets?
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Chapter 5: A Day in the Life of a Theatre
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Sample Questions
Q1) What is the purpose of the ghost light?
A)To scare the audience
B)To increase the artistic quality of the performance
C)To increase safety
D)To cue actors to make their entrance
E)To light the audience's way in case of a fire
Q2) Where do stage managers keep all the blocking and cue notes?
A)In their head
B)The record notebook
C)The production score
D)The script notebook
E)The prompt book
Q3) The person who supervises all the construction crews is called...
A)The artistic director
B)The producer
C)The technical director
D)The overall director
E)The master carpenter
Q4) What is the primary motivation that encourages a person to be his or her most creative?
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Chapter 6: The Art of Playwriting
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Sample Questions
Q1) This story is an example of...
A)Realism
B)A full plot
C)A nonformula plot
D)A formula plot
Q2) What structural part of the story does (4)indicate?
A)Complication
B)Enlightenment
C)Disturbance
D)Climax
E)Major decision
Q3) What structural part of the story does (5)indicate?
A)Complication
B)Enlightenment
C)Disturbance
D)Climax
E)Dark moment
Q4) A statement about life,or a central idea,or a moral describes what aspect of a play?
Q5) Which type of union requires membership? (For example,the WGA)
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Chapter 7: The Art of Acting
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Sample Questions
Q1) Select a character from one of the plays that you have read.If you were to play this character in a production,what are the given circumstances that you would say best describe the particular world in which this character lives? What does this character want most in life,that is,what is her or his superobjective? Why can't this character achieve this early in the play? What are the specific obstacles that are getting in her or his way?
Q2) When actors have little or no emotional bond with a character,they replace the character's emotions with unrelated but personal emotions of their own.This technique is called...
A)Swapping out
B)Empathy
C)Switcheroo
D)Substitution
E)Acting from the inside out
Q3) If a character's inner conflict is powerful enough to affect his or her good judgment and cause the character to make unfortunate choices,it is called a(n)...
Q4) What is the method Stanislavsky advocated to help an actor get to the point of feeling a strong empathy for his/her character?
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Page 9
Chapter 8: The Art of Directing
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Sample Questions
Q1) A director will divide dialogue into small structural units to understand the play moment by moment.What are these units called?
A)Beats
B)Minis
C)Minor moments
D)Scene subdivision
Q2) The plays of creative directors are sometimes called __________ because the director's artistic vision dominates.
Q3) The stage area to the audience's left is called
Q4) A common theatre adage says that 90 percent of directing is
A)Script analysis
B)Devising the production concept
C)Picturization
D)Casting
E)Blocking
Q5) One of the greatest directors was Konstantin Stanislavsky.With which theatre is he associated?
Q6) Actors who take focus when they aren't supposed to are said to be doing what?
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Chapter 9: The Art of Design
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Sample Questions
Q1) Designers will often use this computer program to work on the design for a production.
Q2) What do designers do to prepare for production meetings and to create a production concept and design? Choose one of the plays you have read and select one area of design.How would you go about developing a design concept for that particular play? What would be some of the factors you would keep in mind?
Q3) Early gas-powered spotlights were often called...
A)GasX
B)Chatter lights
C)Liquid lights
D)Limelights
E)Turbine lights
Q4) What are the two basic categories of stage lighting?
A)Bright and dim
B)Emotional and expressive
C)Theatrical and sun light
D)Motivated and nonmotivated
E)Vertical and horizontal
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Chapter 10: A Creative Life
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Sample Questions
Q1) Many educators and artists would make the case that exposure to and participation in children's theatre can be very beneficial to most elementary school children.In a time when budget cuts often put the arts in jeopardy in our public schools,what are the main arguments you would use to the board of education to retain or develop children's theatre at your local elementary school?
Q2) Which of the following most closely characterizes creativity as it was defined in the book?
A)Beyond description
B)A moment of insight
C)A branch of philosophy
D)Inspired by emotion not reason
E)Pure thought
Q3) Talent is an important part of creativity,and it rarely needs developing-people are simply born with it.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What is the primary motivation that encourages a person to be his or her most creative?
Q5) What is the difference between creativity and technique?
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Chapter 11: The Musical
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28 Verified Questions
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Sample Questions
Q1) What musical combined comedy and serious drama to create what we know today as the American musical?
A)Singin' in the Rain
B)Show Boat
C)The Sound of Music
D)Fiddler on the Roof
E)Man of La Mancha
Q2) Which type of opera is sometimes called light opera?
A)Opera to go
B)Operetta
C)Musical comedy
D)Nimble opera
E)Sprightly opera
Q3) When a song is sung a second time in a musical it is called a(n)...
Q4) Mamma Mia! is considered a(n)...
A)Jukebox musical
B)Book musical
C)Dance musical
D)Operatic musical
Q5) The first operas were staged in what country?
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Theatre Around the World
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Sample Questions
Q1) ?
The play Sarzan,written by Senegalese poet Lamine Diakhaté,is a postcolonial drama known as the
Q2) In __________,the storytelling theatre Halqa,meaning "circle," is named for the performance space.
A)India
B)Nigeria
C)Japan
D)China
E)Morocco
Q3) The British opened the first European-style theatre in what country or region on the African continent?
Q4) In order to understand the early forms of theatre in _______,the likely birthplace of theatre,it is necessary to first free ourselves from Western conventions.
A)Europe
B)The Americas
C)Antarctica
D)Oceania
E)Africa
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Chapter 13: The Greeks to the Rise of Christianity
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Q1) What words do scholars use to identify later Greek comic plays (i.e.,plays that happened after the end of the Peloponnesian war when there was little freedom of speech in Athens)?
A)Old Comedy
B)Goat song
C)Spartan specials
D)New Comedy
E)Dictator plays
Q2) Although there are many theories about how theatre began in Athens,many scholars accept Aristotle's claim that theatre grew out of a ritual called...
Q3) How did the early Christians feel about the theatre?
Q4) Which great general spread Greek theatre?
Q5) Which ancient Greek playwright wrote Agamemnon?
A)Aeschylus
B)Sophocles
C)Euripides
D)Aristophanes
E)Archimedes
Q6) The third actor in a Greek play was called the ____________________.
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Chapter 14: The Dark Ages to the Dawn of the Renaissance
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which group Latinized their names,held up Socrates as a "saint," and even burned candles before busts of Aristotle and Plato?
Q2) ____ plays tell stories about the lives of the saints.
A)Morality
B)Mystery
C)Miracle
D)Mirth
Q3) From the Latin "studius humanitatis," meaning the "studies of mankind," these people idolized the Romans and Greeks.
A)The Students of Humanities
B)Humanists
C)The Reformation Student Movement
D)The Eastern Orthodox Church
E)None of these choices
Q4) During the Middle Ages,bakers were most likely to stage a mystery play about...
A)Noah's ark
B)The Magi
C)The Last Supper
D)Jonah and the whale
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Chapter 15: The Renaissance
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Humanist Scholars of the Renaissance advocated for a style of acting that they thought mimicked that of the Greeks.This style of acting,in which lines are delivered directly to the audience in a rhetorical manner,is called...
Q2) During the Renaissance,there was a lack of theatres in Paris,so where were plays often performed?
A)Tennis courts
B)Kitchens
C)Street corners
D)Voting halls
E)The courtyards of inns
Q3) In a commedia dell'arte,_______ is the servant and acrobat who is smarter than his master.
A)Arlecchino
B)Scapino
C)Pantalone
D)Innamorata
E)La Ruffiana
Q4) One of the most popular characters in the commedia dell'arte is the servant to Pantalone whose costume has multicolored lozenges.Who is he?
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Chapter 16: The Restoration, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which type of Restoration play featured great wit and wordplay and told stories about sexual gratification,bedroom escapades,and humankind's primitive nature when it comes to sex?
Q2) This author of Candide was recognized internationally as a novelist,poet,playwright,and essayist.
A)Beaumarchais
B)Goethe
C)Lessing
D)Swift
E)Voltaire
Q3) Which Enlightenment playwright wrote Nathan the Wise?
A)Lessing
B)Voltaire
C)Shakespeare
D)Denis Diderot
E)Beaumarchais
Q4) Beaumarchais and Lessing were two important playwrights writing during the Enlightenment.Identify one major play by each playwright and discuss how these two plays reflect the values of the period in which they were written?
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Chapter 17: Modern Theatre
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Sample Questions
Q1) One of the most popular playwrights of the first half of the twentieth century who wrote high comedies and thought-provoking plays and was the author of Pygmalion is...
A)Oscar Wilde
B)Henrik Ibsen
C)George Bernard Shaw
D)John Millington Synge
E)Tennessee Williams
Q2) Which "ism" was an extreme form of realism,sometimes called "slice of life"?
A)Surrealism
B)Dadaism
C)Expressionism
D)Naturalism
E)Absurdism
Q3) Unstructured theatrical events staged on street corners,at bus stops,and virtually anywhere people gathered were known as
Q4) What German philosopher and social scientist had a great effect on realism?
Q5) Realism and its development are most closely associated with the development of what other art form?
Q6) Which Russian playwright was famous for writing The Cherry Orchard?
Page 19
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