Theatre Arts Question
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Course Introduction
Theatre Arts is an exploration of the dynamic world of drama and live performance, encompassing both the practical and theoretical aspects of the craft. This course introduces students to the history, literature, and fundamental techniques of theatre, including acting, direction, stage design, and production management. Through hands-on activities, workshops, and analysis of dramatic texts, students develop creative expression, collaboration, and critical thinking skills, while gaining a deeper appreciation for the cultural, social, and historical significance of theatre in society.
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The Art of Theatre Then and Now 4th Edition by William Missouri Downs
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390 Verified Questions
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Page 2
Chapter 1: Theatre, Art, and Entertainment
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Sample Questions
Q1) For an art form to be considered theatre,it must have conflict.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) When the word art appears in everyday conversation,it is used in a wide array of contexts but generally conveys three main ideas.Which of the following is not one of the three?
A)Sophistication
B)Skill
C)Beauty
D)Meaning
Answer: A
Q3) Whether explicit or implicit,what is at the core of drama?
Answer: Conflict
Q4) 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
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Chapter 2: Stage versus Screen
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Q1) Identify three reasons why the federal government of the United States does not provide the same level of support for the arts that comparable Western democracies do.What would need to happen in this country to change this policy?
Answer: The U.S.government prioritizes spending on the military,the national debt,and education over spending on the arts by a wide margin.Student answers will vary.
Q2) Which type of scriptwriters does not sell their copyrights?
Answer: Playwrights
Q3) Which best describes public domain?
A)Family rated TV
B)When a copyright expires
C)Another way of saying "audience."
D)TV shows about the general public
E)When the general public decides what will and what will not be on TV
Answer: B
Q4) 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))
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Chapter 3: Theatre of the People
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Q1) Which type of theatre promotes a particular people's cultural identity?
A)Theatre of identity
B)Personality theatre
C)Theatre of protest
D)Cross-cultural theatre
Answer: A
Q2) 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.
Q3) 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
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Experiencing and Analyzing Plays
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Q1) When we go to the theatre we know what is happening on stage is not real and so we put aside our concerns about reality and agree to accept the play's quasi reality.What is this called?
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
Q4) 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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Q1) What is the primary motivation that encourages a person to be his or her most creative?
Q2) 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
Q3) Before they make their entrances,actors often wait...
A)Near the loading dock
B)In the redroom
C)In the main office
D)In the production lobby
E)In the greenroom
Q4) The _______,written by the stage manager,lets the entire ensemble know how rehearsal went and informs designers of any concerns or ideas that came up.
Q5) 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?
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Chapter 6: The Art of Playwriting
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Q1) What structural part of the story does (2)indicate?
A)Complication
B)Enlightenment
C)Disturbance
D)Climax
E)Major decision
Q2) Which type of union requires membership? (For example,the WGA)
Q3) Exposition,sometimes called ____________,lets the audience in on what happened to the characters before the play began and what happens between the scenes and offstage.
Q4) This story is an example of...
A)Realism
B)A full plot
C)A nonformula plot
D)A formula plot
Q5) A line of dialogue has two levels: what the character says (the text)and what the character consciously or subconsciously means.This second level is called...
Q6) Can plays make good screenplays? Can the opposite be true? Why,or why not?
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Chapter 7: The Art of Acting
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Q1) The ability to understand and identify with another's situation,feelings,and motives so completely that you feel you are experiencing that situation and those emotions is called...
Q2) When actors think back over certain incidents in their lives and remember them well enough to relive the accompanying emotions,it is called...
A)Catharsis
B)Emotionalism
C)Impassioned dramatics
D)Emotional memory
E)Temperamental acting
Q3) Stanislavsky is perhaps the most famous acting teacher of the twentieth century.His method of acting became known as...
Q4) 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)...
Q5) In this type of audition the actors are given only about a minute to perform.What is this type of fast-moving audition called?
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Chapter 8: The Art of Directing
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Q1) The plays of creative directors are sometimes called __________ because the director's artistic vision dominates.
Q2) Actors who take focus when they aren't supposed to are said to be doing what?
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) Which of the following is not a method directors use to achieve focus?
A)Matching focus
B)Levels
C)Contrast
D)Triangulation
Q5) During rehearsals,the director helps the actors plot their movements.This is called...
Q6) One of the greatest directors was Konstantin Stanislavsky.With which theatre is he associated?
Q7) The stage area to the audience's left is called
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Chapter 9: The Art of Design
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Q1) Which of the following is not one of the basic elements of design?
A)Dimension
B)Balance
C)Line
D)Movement
E)Tone
Q2) In which form of realism do some design elements appear authentic,while other elements are stylized?
Q3) Which type of theatre has a stage that protrudes into the auditorium so that the audience must sit around three sides of the stage?
A)Realistic theatre
B)Proscenium arch
C)Arena theatre
D)Thrust stage
E)Black box
Q4) The part of the proscenium stage that extends into the audience's side of the picture frame is called the ____________________.
Q5) With which theatrical style is the subconscious of the characters emphasized in the design?
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Chapter 10: A Creative Life
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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) What are the four basic steps to problem solving?
Q3) 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?
Q4) Which of the following is not one of the steps in basic problem solving?
A)Brainstorm possible solutions
B)Test the solution
C)Consult the manual
D)Specify the problem
E)Break the problem into manageable components
Q5) Talent is an important part of creativity,and it rarely needs developing-people are simply born with it.
A)True
B)False
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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Sample Questions
Q1) While the number of musicals per season has declined,the genre of musical theatre continues to be popular with the theatre-going public.The same cannot be said for the film musical,which dropped out of favor in the mid-1960s.Recently,there has been a resurgence in the film musical with the popularity of such films as Moulin Rouge,Chicago,and Rent.What accounts for films' renewed interest in going public in this type of musical?
Q2) When a song is sung a second time in a musical it is called a(n)...
Q3) Which play,produced in 1866,is often called the first modern musical?
A)Applause
B)The Bandwagon
C)Bamboozled
D)The Black Crook
E)Of Thee I Sing
Q4) Which type of opera is sometimes called light opera?
A)Opera to go
B)Operetta
C)Musical comedy
D)Nimble opera
E)Sprightly opera
Q5) ____________________ is the most expensive musical ever.
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Theatre Around the World
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Q1) Many scholars agree that theatre grew out of...
A)Aristotle's writing
B)Bronze Age kings
C)Political speeches
D)Religious rituals
E)Scripted weddings
Q2) ?
The play Sarzan,written by Senegalese poet Lamine Diakhaté,is a postcolonial drama known as the
Q3) ____________________ by Kalidasa is one of the most revered and important Sanskrit plays.
Q4) Ritual ...
A)Continues to play an important role in our lives today
B)Is no longer important in the modern world
C)Is synonymous with theatre
D)Is more important today than in ancient times
Q5) _____ 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.
Q6) Actors in China sometimes refer to themselves as Children of the...
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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) What were the six elements of drama that Aristotle discussed in his treatise,Poetics? Choose one of your favorite contemporary plays or films and analyze the structure of that play or film using the six elements described in Aristotle's famous essay.
Q3) 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...
Q4) Greek plays often began with a short introductory speech or scene known as the
Q5) One of the main features of ancient Greek theatres was a circular playing or "dancing place." This circular playing area was called the...
Q6) The seating or "seeing place" in an ancient Greek theatre was called the...
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Page 15
Chapter 14: The Dark Ages to the Dawn of the Renaissance
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Q1) What period of European history was a time of rebellion and rebirth? (In fact,its name means "rebirth.")
Q2) What are the primary types of drama popular during the Middle Ages? Give some examples.How do these types of drama reflect the time period in which they were most popular? What do they tell us about the "world view" of the people living at that time?
Q3) As Europe moved from the High Middle Ages to the Renaissance,drama began to flourish.What was this time period like for those living then? What aspects of the culture at this time encouraged the development of secular drama?
Q4) 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
Q5) Writers of mystery plays rarely put their names on the scripts so as not to show the sin of
Q6) On Tuesday,May 29,1453,what city fell after a six-week siege?
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Chapter 15: The Renaissance
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Q1) French comic writer __________ is famous for his satires about the medical profession,such as The Imaginary Invalid.
Q2) During the Renaissance,three broad categories of theatre came to dominate Europe.Which of the following does not belong?
A)Popular
B)Fine art
C)Humanist
D)Liturgical
Q3) The Puritans constantly attacked the theatre as an institution and as an art form.If you were a lawyer defending their position before the Queen of England,what would be the main objections that they would have with the theatre and how would you defend their position?
Q4) Drama developed very differently in Spain than it did in England during the Renaissance.How would you characterize the differences? What accounts for this difference in terms of the culture of each country?
Q5) In order to skirt the anti-theatre laws of the day,James Burbage built his famous indoor theatre in an old Dominican friary called
Q6) The terms "upstage" and "downstage" come from what period and country?
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Chapter 16: The Restoration, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism
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Q1) How did the French playwright Beaumarchais help the United States?
A)He taught American playwrights how to write plays.
B)He lent money to help finance the American Revolution.
C)He joined the Boston Tea Party.
D)He introduced theatre in the United States.
E)He was a general in the American army and fought with Washington.
Q2) ?Named for the background music that often accompanied the performances,__________included sensational subjects,stock characters,virtuous heroes,dastardly villains,and striking spectacles.
Q3) Francis Bacon felt there were certain false appearances,which he called "idols of knowledge," and that these were a hindrance to reason.Which of these "idols" is our desire to believe in ideas that are supported merely by pretty rhetoric rather than by logical,empirical reasoning?
A)Idols of the tribe
B)Idols of the cave
C)Idols of the marketplace
D)Idols of the theatre
E)Idols of acting
Q4) The best-known Romantic play today is ____________________,written by Victor Hugo.
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Chapter 17: Modern Theatre
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Q1) 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
Q2) Unstructured theatrical events staged on street corners,at bus stops,and virtually anywhere people gathered were known as
Q3) One of the first theatres to have box sets was the Olympic Theatre in...
A)New York
B)Chicago
C)Paris
D)London
E)Madrid
Q4) A permanent,professional theatre that is located away from New York City is called...
Q5) 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?
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