What is a play?

Drama is one of the three main kinds of literature, which simultaneously corresponds to three kinds of art - literature, theater and music.

Dramaturgy is mainly associated with the theater,as the main kind of spectacular art. On his stage all the "three oneness" that underlie any dramatic work are realized. Their species concept, intended for performance from the stage, has long been called plays. The very word "play" of French origin and literally means "excerpt", "part", "work". Otherwise the play can be called any dramatic work intended for staging in the theater, as well as for radio and television performances.

In the musical art, a play is understood asfirst of all the species name of the works of instrumental music. However, there are other meanings, for example, a finished piece of music or a small instrumental lyrical composition.

Building a play

It should be noted that the very concept of the play -It is purely formal and does not bear any genre and stylistic load. However, as a rule, the name of the play explains or specifies its genre peculiarity: comedy, tragedy, drama, tragicomedy, etc.

Any play in the construction of its composition is subject to the laws of the "three oneness", which belong to the pen of Aristotle - the unity of time, place and action.

The logical sequence of the action is always written in the following order of the elements of the play:

Exposure is the commissioning of a play. It contains the arrangement of actors, describes how circumstances develop, the reasons why the storyline begins to unfold. As a rule, the exposure is before the outset of the action.
Tie - here begins to unfold the main conflict of the play.
Increasing the action is a chain of events originating from the conflict of the play.
The climax is the peak of the main conflict.
The denouement of action - mostly triggered by the culmination, we learn with what the heroes end up in the end: someone loses, wins, and someone dies.

The structure of the play is presented

dialogues and monologues of heroes;
author's remarks, where the author wants to emphasize, for example, some features of the behavior of the hero or situation;
list of actors who are given at the very beginning of the play, indicating the profession or related ties of the characters;
acts - the semantic parts of the play, which in turn are divided into smaller - episodes, pictures, phenomena.

Features and genre identity

The main difference between the play and other dramatic works is that it was created exclusively for performances in the theater.

Also, the play has a certain chain of developmentplot, about which we spoke a little higher: the exposition - the outset - the growing conflict - the culmination - the denouement. It should be noted that such a state prevailed in the European theater until the middle of the 19th century, while the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen did not reform the canons of the play. With Ibsen, the dramatic production began to carry ideological implications, and where it usually ended (the denouement), everything was just beginning with him. Replicas and dialogues of the heroes began to play a more significant role in the deployment of the idea and the plot. The human voice became the lead in the play, and the psychology of the hero became more evident in drama.

The play, as already mentioned, is nota special kind or genre of drama, however, it can be put in any genre, for example, in the genre of comedy, where humorous subtext is the driving force of the play. Or, conversely, staging in the genre of tragedy - where the plot inevitably moves to a catastrophic outcome of the action: someone dies or someone kills. Genre peculiarity helps the viewer to enter the author's stylistics of the play's construction.

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