Main /

Drama

Drama


Page Content:

Definition:

Literature written for performance.

Purposes:

  • To entertain
  • To reflect on life
  • To enlighten or inform

Characteristics:

  • Exposition (explanation of the story line told by a narrator, announcer, or one of the characters )
  • Scripts
  • Dramatic monologue (composition in which the speaker reveals his or her character in relation to a critical situation or even addressed to a reader or presumed listener)
  • Stage directions
  • Scenery, sound effects and lighting
  • Narrative structure and elements

Themes:

  • Dependent on content, purpose and genre type (dramas can be built around all types of narrative genres)

Characters:

  • Often contrasted (e.g., hero versus villain)
  • Purposeful dialogue reveals traits

Setting:

  • Context helps the viewer understand the attitudes revealed in the play
  • May have been written in a different time period, or be historical in nature

Plot:

  • Opposition/conflict are often exaggerated
  • Climax, decisive moment, and/or turning point are critical

Author’s craft:

  • Story expressed through dialogue or pantomime
  • Writing effective stage directions
  • Emphasis on conflict/climax
  • Protagonist vs. antagonist
  • Developing the turning point
  • Developing subgenres (e.g., monologues, choral reading, musicals, skits, pantomimes, comedy, tragedy, audience participation, melodrama, one-act plays, reader’s theater)
  • Effectively conveying insight or information
  • Detailing stage directions
  • Coherent organization
  • Presentation of performance cues
  • Effective language
  • Sound effects
  • Symbolism
  • Archetypes (characters developed following a pattern or prototype) and stereotypes (conventional, oversimplified, or lacking individuality)

Grade Level Instructional Scope for COMPREHENDING the Genre and Text of Drama:

Grade 2

Opportunities to Teach:

Grade 7

Opportunities to Teach:

  • Basic elements
  • Purpose
  • Oral reading fluency
  • Expression
  • Reading stage directions
  • Assuming character’s role
  • Critical listening
  • Problem/solution
  • Characterization through actions and words
  • Inferring motivations
  • Time and place
  • Sequence of events in plot
  • Sense of story (beginning, middle, end)
  • Theme
  • Story grammar
  • Identification with characters
  • Tensions among characters within communities
  • Abstract theme or universal truth
  • Structure
  • Elements
  • Style
  • Purpose
  • Characterization
  • Issues and tensions between characters and communities
  • Reading stage directions
  • Dialogue/monologue
  • Antagonists/protagonists
  • Internal/external conflict
  • Theme
  • Context (setting)
  • Overstatement
  • Exaggeration
  • Performance

Grade Level Instructional Scope for COMPOSING the Genre and Text of Drama:

Grade 7
  • Writing process
  • Script format
  • Exposition (provides background information to the reader)
  • Narration
  • Characterization through movements and action
  • Character development and roles
  • Creating tensions
  • Structure of storyline
  • Developing context/time/place/episodes
  • Active voice
  • Pacing the action
  • Purposeful dialogue
  • Stage directions

Booklists:

Access to the Documents:

Complete K-8 Genre Project
From the Michigan Department of Education

Complete K-8 Genre Booklist
From Kent Intermediate School District


Page last modified on February 11, 2009, at 10:35 AM