Theatre Appreciation Final Exam
Course Introduction
Theatre Appreciation offers students an introduction to the art form of theatre, exploring its history, cultural significance, and the collaborative processes behind productions. Through analysis of plays, viewing live or recorded performances, and engaging discussions, students gain insight into the roles of playwrights, directors, actors, designers, and technicians. This course encourages critical thinking about theatrical styles, genres, and movements, and helps students develop a deeper understanding of how theatre reflects and shapes society. No prior theatre experience is required, making this course accessible to all who are interested in enhancing their appreciation of this dynamic performing art.
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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Chapter 1: Theatre, Art, and Entertainment
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Sample Questions
Q1) This ancient philosopher believed that good theatre fortifies us because it allows us to release repressed emotions in a controlled,therapeutic way.
A)Epictetus
B)Plato
C)Archimedes
D)Aristotle
E)Confucius
Answer: D
Q2) Is it correct that the main purpose of art is to reaffirm society's values?
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) In his book The Empty Space,English director Peter Brook states that all that is needed for theatre to occur is an empty space and someone to walk across that space while someone else does what?
Answer: Watches
Q4) Whether explicit or implicit,what is at the core of drama?
Answer: Conflict
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Chapter 2: Stage versus Screen
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Q1) If the playwright has been deceased for more than seventy years,the copyright no longer applies.What is this called?
Answer: Public domain
Q2) Most nonprofit theatres do not cover their costs from selling tickets.On average what percentage of their costs are covered by selling tickets?
A)10%
B)25%
C)60%
D)75%
E)99%
Answer: C
Q3) An example of product placement is...
A)Animal Planet's "Puppy Bowl"
B)An actor in a movie drinking Tropicana orange juice
C)Super Bowl advertising
D)Dubbing songs for screen actors
Answer: B
Q4) Which type of scriptwriters sells their copyrights?
Answer: Screenwriters
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Chapter 3: Theatre of the People
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Sample Questions
Q1) What are the advantages of mixing cultures in cross-cultural theatre? What are the disadvantages? If you were a producer at a regional theatre company,would you encourage or discourage your theatre from participating in cross-cultural theatre? Why?
Answer: Cross-cultural theatre joins people of diverse cultures and exposes the complexities among cultures by putting them on the stage side by side.However,some believe that it simply reduces culture to an interesting stage technique or amounts to inappropriate cultural appropriation.Student answers will vary.
Q2) One study found that while 73.1 percent of all speaking roles in movies were white,only 4.9 percent of all speaking roles were written for Hispanic/Latino actors.This makes whites in movies a _________.
Answer: privileged group
Q3) ____________ gives voice to groups that privileged cultures ignore or silence.
Answer: Theatre of identity
Q4) In a country as diverse as our own,what is the role of protest theatre within our culture?
Answer: Protest theatre gives a voice to the many points of view in our culture and sheds light on issues affecting minorities and oppressed groups.Student answers will vary.
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Experiencing and Analyzing Plays
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Sample Questions
Q1) 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
Q2) This type of theatre makes no attempt to offer a realistic illusion on stage,and the actors openly acknowledge the audience and sometimes even invite members to participate.
A)Realism
B)Naturalism
C)Representational
D)Presentational
Q3) Greek philosopher Aristotle deconstructed plays into six elements.Which of the following is not one of those elements?
A)Plot
B)Thought
C)Diction
D)Spectacle
E)Visual art
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Page 6
Chapter 5: A Day in the Life of a Theatre
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Q1) 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
Q2) Months before a play begins rehearsal,the designers and directors often meet to discuss the production's look and style as well as the interpretation of the playwright's script.What is this meeting called?
Q3) This member of the construction crew stands above all the crew chiefs and answers only to the director,the designers,and the budget office.He or she also coordinates,schedules,and engineers the technical elements of the production.Name this position.
Q4) In theatre lingo,a "house" is...
A)The area above the stage
B)The lobby
C)The place where the audience sits
D)The actors' warm up room
E)The entrance to the stage
Q5) The person in charge of the ushers is called...
Page 7
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Chapter 6: The Art of Playwriting
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Q1) Can plays make good screenplays? Can the opposite be true? Why,or why not?
Q2) What structural part of the story does (6)indicate?
A)Opening event
B)Climax
C)Dark moment
D)Enlightenment
E)Catharsis
Q3) Who is the protagonist of this story?
A)President's shy daughter
B)Oprah
C)Literary art
D)The Porsche
E)Brad
Q4) What structural part of the story does (2)indicate?
A)Complication
B)Enlightenment
C)Disturbance
D)Climax
E)Major decision
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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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) Acting on stage and acting in film,while related,are very different kinds of performance.How would you describe the major differences between the two? While it is true that many stage actors have "crossed over" to film acting,many fewer film actors have "crossed over" to live performance.Why is that?
Q3) This acting technique allows actors to find similarities between themselves and the character and to explore the resulting emotions and thoughts by asking an important question.
A)The magic if
B)Emotionalism
C)Impassioned dramatics
D)The ten questions of acting
E)Acting from the inside out
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Chapter 8: The Art of Directing
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Q1) What are the primary responsibilities of a director? Use one of the plays you have read as a way by which to illustrate each of your points.
Q2) Known as one of the first modern directors,this man not only directed the actors but also ruled them as their official head of state.
A)King Charles II
B)The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen
C)Emperor Ch'ien-lung
D)Lord Ming Huang
E)Emperor Constantine
Q3) 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
Q4) One of the greatest directors was Konstantin Stanislavsky.With which theatre is he associated?
Q5) During rehearsals,the director helps the actors plot their movements.This is called...
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Page 10
Chapter 9: The Art of Design
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Sample Questions
Q1) The part of the proscenium stage that extends into the audience's side of the picture frame is called the ____________________.
Q2) Which type of theatre is sometimes called a "picture frame" theatre?
A)Realistic theatre
B)Proscenium arch
C)Arena theatre
D)Thrust stage
E)Black box
Q3) In which form of realism do some design elements appear authentic,while other elements are stylized?
Q4) Sofas,chairs,and beds are examples of
A)Models
B)Straight props
C)Set decorations
D)Set props
E)Hand props
Q5) Designers will often use this computer program to work on the design for a production.
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Chapter 10: A Creative Life
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Q1) 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
Q2) What is the difference between creativity and technique?
Q3) Which of the following would not help enhance your creativity?
A)Get enough exercise and sleep
B)Consider your environment
C)Work late at night
D)Assess your motivation
E)Temper your criticism
Q4) According to researchers,what are five of the most important characteristics of creative people? Which one would you say is the most essential and why?
Q5) ____________________ are procedures that have been proven to work repeatedly.They are methods by which a complex task can be accomplished.
Q6) What are the six forms of intelligence according to Howard Gardner?
Page 12
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Chapter 11: The Musical
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Q1) A musical has three parts: the music with orchestrated melodies; the lyrics or the sung words; and the spoken lines of dialogue.What other name describes the spoken lines?
A)Book
B)Dialogue
C)Oral element
D)Play
E)Plotline
Q2) What form of early American "entertainment" included comic scenes,dance interludes,and sentimental ballads,all based on white stereotypes of black life in the South?
A)Singing musicals
B)Minstrel shows
C)Dixie plays
D)Civil War melodies
Q3) The first operas were staged in what country?
Q4) What term refers to the cinema of India?
Q5) ____________________ was the first "talkie" movie.
Q6) When a song is sung a second time in a musical it is called a(n)...
Q7) The earliest American musicals were what kind of musical?
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Chapter 12: Theatre Around the World
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Q1) _____ is a technique used by everyone from Shakespeare to African storytellers in which audiences are invited to "see" the story with their mind's eye.
Q2) Of the three periods of African theatre which is sometimes called total theatre?
Q3) Who was the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Q4) In __________,the storytelling theatre Halqa,meaning "circle," is named for the performance space.
A)India
B)Nigeria
C)Japan
D)China
E)Morocco
Q5) 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) Around 500 BCE,Greece was made up of strong independent city-states,including all but which of the following?
A)Sparta
B)Corinth
C)Thebes
D)Athens
E)Rome
Q2) Which Roman emperor often acted on stage?
A)Augustus
B)Julius Caesar
C)Marcus Aurelius
D)Nero
E)Caligula
Q3) Why were later Roman mime performances often silent?
A)Because they were outlawed from speaking
B)Because in Rome many different languages were spoken
C)Because Emperor Nero had their tongues ripped out
D)Because Emperor Caligula ordered them to not interrupt his speeches
E)None of these choices
Q4) How did the early Christians feel about the theatre?
Page 15
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Chapter 14: The Dark Ages to the Dawn of the Renaissance
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Q1) According to Aristotle,which of his "four causes" was that which brings it all together,the "end in mind" or the purpose served.
A)Final cause
B)Material cause
C)Formal cause
D)Efficient cause
Q2) The "dance of death" common in paintings and frescoes for many years was inspired by
Q3) Writers of mystery plays rarely put their names on the scripts so as not to show the sin of
Q4) On Tuesday,May 29,1453,what city fell after a six-week siege?
Q5) According to Aristotle,which of his "four causes" was just the physical stuff of the world? (For example,a block of marble that has yet to be made into a statue.)
A)Efficient cause
B)Material cause
C)Formal cause
D)Final cause
Q6) Which play is a comic farce about three shepherds?
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Chapter 15: The Renaissance
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Q1) During the Renaissance,some scholars idolized the Romans and Greeks; they rejected the traditional curriculum of theology and instead studied the classical subjects.These scholars were called...
A)The Students of Humanities
B)The Reformation Student Movement
C)The Eastern Orthodox Church
D)Humanists
E)Autos sacramentales
Q2) Commedia dell'arte,though popular throughout all of Europe,has its roots in...
A)England
B)France
C)Germany
D)Italy
E)Spain
Q3) After 1574 theatre was banned within the city limits of London because of the protests of which religious group?
Q4) The first important architect of the Italian Renaissance,credited with inventing perspective painting,is...
Q5) During the Renaissance,the Italians invented what type of scene painting?
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Chapter 16: The Restoration, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism
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Q1) Who caught the eye of Charles II when she acted in London?
Q2) ?Named for the background music that often accompanied the performances,__________included sensational subjects,stock characters,virtuous heroes,dastardly villains,and striking spectacles.
Q3) Which Enlightenment playwright wrote Nathan the Wise?
A)Lessing
B)Voltaire
C)Shakespeare
D)Denis Diderot
E)Beaumarchais
Q4) This Enlightenment playwright wrote such plays as The Barber of Seville and its sequel The Marriage of Figaro.
A)Lessing
B)Voltaire
C)Shakespeare
D)Denis Diderot
E)Beaumarchais
Q5) Nell Gwynn was one of the most popular actresses during the Restoration,and her specialty was playing male characters in male clothing.These kinds of roles are called...
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Chapter 17: Modern Theatre
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Q1) What word is used to describe any work of art that is experimental,innovative,or unconventional?
Q2) Avant-garde theatre was born in reaction to dwindling theatre audiences brought about by the invention of
Q3) Which type of theatre flourished in lofts,basements,coffeehouses,storefronts,and cafes in New York City?
A)Off-Off-Broadway
B)Regional theatre
C)Loop theatre
D)Repertory theatre
E)Neighborhood theatre
Q4) Realism and its development are most closely associated with the development of what other art form?
Q5) __________ began in Germany as a reaction to the Impressionist art of painters such as Monet,Renoir,and Cezanne.
Q6) What type of realistic sets often depicted real rooms with the fourth wall removed so that the audience could sit in the dark and spy on the characters?
Q7) What German philosopher and social scientist had a great effect on realism?
Page 19
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