Theatre's Key Concepts & Ideas
Major Elements of Theatrical Design
Audience's Experience
Costumes
Lighting
Set
The Play of Action
What is Action?
David Ball characterizes action in Backwards and Forwards, saying "A play is a series of actions. A play is not about action, nor does it describe action…A play is action.... Action occurs when something happens that makes or permits something else to happen (9)."
Plays require an intrusion where something, whether that be a character's behavior, a shift in setting, or something significant and noticeable, is inserted into the plot. This breaks any stasis in a play's action, which Ball eloquently describes as "a state in which all forces balance each other, resulting in no movement" (19).
Example of both an intrusion and a forward from Long Day's Journey into Night: Edmund's cough incites conversation about his ill condition, which we are later informed is tuberculosis. His cough interrupts James and Mary Tyrone's conversation prior conversation, and introduces the audience to one of the central issues of the play: Edmund's illness and how the Tyrone family will handle it.
Action is understood and propelled through exposition, which the revelation of information needed by the audience to understand the play's action.
Costumes provide insight into the environment where action unfolds. They reflect integral aspects of the environment, such as time period, location in a particular time, and the value systems of general societal groups.
Costumes express specific, individual character traits that may distinguish certain characters from the rest of the characters.
Characters may stand out as their costumes can implicate psychological and/or interpersonal tensions designated for the play.
The costumes are important for specific characters' behavior. For example, in a performance in Win Wenders' Pina, the dancers are wearing loose, light dresses that do not restrict mobility. This permits the dancers to dance gracefully in the attempt to convey meaning without dialogue.
Forwards
Audiences remain engaged with plays that have intriguing forwards. These forwards are characterized by dramatic tension that remains unresolved without further action. In essence, the audience remains engaged because of pivotal plot events, mysterious visuals, etc. that increase the need to know more.
Set designs can be metaphorical, realistic, or a combination of both. The director and set designers include certain levels of detail based on what they feel is necessary.
All characters in a play want something for their benefit. Dramatic conflict is created when a character has something interfere with what they want. This interference is what Ball calls an "obstacle."
Long Day's Journey into Night contains several dramatic conflicts, some of which are:
- Jamie wants to be seen as successful in the Tyrone family like Edmund is, but his alcohol addiction prevents him from being successful.
- James Tyrone wants to have control over his sons and make them respect him, but his reluctance to treat Edmund's illness by paying for a better doctor is his obstacle.
- Mary Tyrone wants to regain her youth and vivacity, but her addiction to morphine and her aging stand in her way.
Lighting is important for a play because it influences the audience's perceptions and emotions. Lighting can be shown and designed using natural lighting, fire, electricity, or a combination of those. The light can then be directed at certain angles to convey particular emotion.
These dancers' dresses also match in this particular scene, which is helpful as they looked like the same individual even though they were moving in different ways. They were also agonizing over a red cloth dress that contrasted the other tan dresses, which may have been symbolic of one individual's mental turmoil. 
Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns, a Post-electric Play does not have much lighting as it is set in a post-apocalyptic world where nuclear disasters caused a societal collapse with few survivors. Due to these circumstances, most of the light in this play comes from non-electric sources. The lighting is verisimilitude as natural sources produce the light, making the setting seem more realistic.
Act 1 is set around a campfire in the dark. The lack of light conveys the depressing and scary conditions the characters are in 20 minutes after the nuclear disaster.
Act 2 is set in an indoor theatre space with the only light source being a skylight. There is more light in this act than Act 1, which demonstrates the characters' conditions have improved slightly. As shown by Act 2's setting, the dark on the sides and exterior of the theatre space evoke the eeriness of the unknown outside of the theatre.
Act 3 is set in an indoor theatre where the primary light sources are candles and oil lamps. There are also some electric lighting devices that do not work very well a long time after the disasters. However, the additional lighting brings emphasis to The Simpsons play being performed to demonstrate the way in which storytelling prevails despite horrible circumstances.
Human Struggles
Theatre can also be used to portray human struggle and depict and expose general societal issues. Theatre can effect one's emotions and one's perspective on social matters. Some plays that portray such issues are August Wilson's Fences, Anna Deavere Smith's Notes from the Field, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco's Couple in the Cage, Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights, Diana Oh's ~my lingerie play~, María Irene Fornes' Fefu and her Friends, and Chantal Bilodeau's Sila.
August Wilson's Fences, Anna Deavere Smith's Notes from the Field, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco's Couple in the Cage all tackle the issue of racism and oppression stemming from racism.
August Wilson's Fences is a play that follows the story of Troy Maxson and his family as Troy struggles with accepting his past and living with the choices he made to put himself in a complicated situation.
Anna Deavere Smith's Notes from the Field examines the way in which communities of poverty tend to have less opportunities and resources offered to them, which in turn makes many of these people act unlawfully out of desperation. This play promotes major social change to aid underprivileged communities that mainly consist of non-white people by using information from first-hand accounts and expert studies. Additionally, it depicts issues of police brutality, unfair judicial systems, and more. The bevy of information conveyed in the play brings emphasis to the need for criminal justice reform and the aid of underprivileged communities.
Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco's Couple in the Cage performance is about the oppression of Native Americans by colonists. It was also supposed to bring attention to the issue of people being put on display for pseudo-scientific physical abnormalities for discriminatory reasons. The performance reflected the way in which indigenous people were seen as specimens inferior to the white colonists. Furthermore, these performances would take place in public spaces and museums in major cities across the world where people could interact with the actors and security guards to learn about this spectacle.
In the performance, Fusco and Gómez-Peña were locked in a cage that had two security guards who would treat them as if they were wild animals. For instance, they would feed them sandwiches and fruit by hand, and they would take them out of the cage on leashes. Fusco and Gómez-Peña would act like they did not understand what was happening around them and would perform basic cultural tasks because they were playing Native Americans who did not know English. Overall, this performance exhibited the racism and severe mistreatment of indigenous people, which raised awareness amongst those who saw it.
Troy is envious of his son, Cory, because Cory is very good at football and had the ability to be scouted to play at elite levels. Troy did not have the same opportunities because he was an African American baseball player forced to play in the "Negro" leagues during a time of stricter athletic segregation. This conflict drives action and portrays Troy's past struggles with racism.
Troy also struggles with his family as he cheats on his wife, Rose, and has a child, Raynell, with Alberta. Raynell is raised by Rose after Alberta's death during childbirth, and Troy treats Raynell better than Cory despite not being a member of the original family.
Overall, Fences demonstrates how the American Dream was unattainable for African Americans because they lacked many of the opportunities white people due to prejudices and discrimination against their ethnicity.
Diana Oh's ~my lingerie play~ and María Irene Fornes' Fefu and her Friends both delve into the issue of feminism and have audiences interact with their plays by being onstage.
Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights describes the lives of several Latin Americans who have financial hardships as they moved to Washington Heights and quickly found themselves in debt with loaded work schedules. Additionally, they are trying to find their way in a new culture in America, which is conveyed through their songs on their desires to fit in with and assimilate to American culture.
Chantal Bilodeau's Sila brings focus to climate change and the ways in which it is harming the environment. It presents scientific information through the characters’ conversations and speeches. The characters have conversations regarding the melting of glaciers in the Canadian Arctic. The play also follows a mother polar bear and her cub as they struggle to survive with a lack of ice. The lack of ice creates a lack of seal and thus is a lack of food for these two. Overall, these characters and bears depict the struggles and adverse environmental effects of global warming on the Canadian Arctic.
~my lingerie play~ discusses issues of sexual harassment, sexual assault, homophobia, and general prejudice against gender queerness. Oh engages with her audience by having them actively play instruments, share their perspectives, etc. In other words, she does not use a conventional proscenium theater, but rather a avant garde sort of set that breaks the fourth wall. As a result, she helps people feel more secure about their overall identity and safety. Her performance art effectively draws attention as it is atypical with its blunt diction and illicit images.
Fefu and her Friends tackles the issue of feminism by having the play be structured in a way where men do not determine the plot. In fact, men are never present onstage. Fornes uses the avant garde style to convey her ideas and thus intrigue the audience into the ideas regarding women's lack of freedom due to patriarchal society.
Leanna is a climate change activist, and she delivers presentations at conferences to explain the effects of climate change around the Canadian Arctic.
Jean is a climate scientist who mentions important environmental facts but dissociates himself from politics as much as possible.
Veronica is a high school teacher who also performs spoken-word poetry. She presents poetry that embodies Inuit values of human-environment interaction.
Movement in Theatre
Oklahoma! is a musical about two men, Curly and Judd, competing for a woman, Laurey. Judd is a more vile character, while Curly is more genuine and well-mannered. Laurey fears Judd in particular and has feelings for Curly. The Dream Ballet scene conveys this in particular as there is no dialogue and Judd acts violently to kill Curly and take Laurey for himself. Judd's movements are important because they convey his intimidating nature and show Laurey's subconscious feelings about both of the men.