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Elements of Drama
Drama on stage often reflects the drama of everyday life, but (just like other forms of
literature and art) it concentrates life, focuses it, and holds it up for examination. Since
plays are written with the intention of performance, the reader of the play must use her
imagination to enact the play as she reads it. Readers of the play need to imagine not just
feelings or a flow of action, but how the action and the characters look in a theater, on a
stage, before a live audience.
Audience
The fact of a live audience also has an important impact on the way plays are created.
The essential feature of an audience involves the fact that they have, at a single instant, a
common experience; they have assembled for the explicit purpose of seeing a play.
Drama not only plays before a live audience of real people who respond directly and
immediately to it, but drama is also conceived by the author with the expectation of a
specific response. Authors calculate for the effect of a community of watchers rather than
for the silent response. With this in mind, most plays written deal with topics that are
timely.
Dialogue
Dialogue provides the substance of a play. Each word uttered by the character furthers
the business of the play, contributes to its effect as a whole. Therefore, a sense of
DECORUM must be established by the characters, i.e., what is said is appropriate to the
role and situation of a character. Also the exposition of the play often falls on the
dialogue of the characters. Remember exposition establishes the relationships, tensions or
conflicts from which later plot developments derive.
Plot
The interest generated by the plot varies for different kinds of plays. (See fiction elements
on plot for more information regarding plot.) The plot is usually structured with acts and
scenes.
• Open conflict plays: rely on the suspense of a struggle in which the hero, through
perhaps fight a against all odds, is not doomed.
• Dramatic thesis: foreshadowing, in the form of ominous hints or symbolic
incidents, conditions the audience to expect certain logical developments.
• Coincidence: sudden reversal of fortune plays depict climatic ironies or
misunderstandings.
• Dramatic irony: the fulfillment of a plan, action, or expectation in a surprising
way, often opposite of what was intended.
