We explain what are the characteristics of a play with respect to its structure, form and content.
What is a play?
A play, drama or play is a literary piece inscribed in the theatrical genre, one of the oldest in the humanitywhere they shake hands literature and the performing arts.
A play is a staging of a story or a series of situations, in such a way that the public appreciates them and can be moved both aesthetically and emotionally. It is, then, a artwork collective.
The works of theater can be very different from each other, and enroll in traditions, schools and very varied tendencies, since they have been evolving together with the different societies since ancient times.
The first plays arose in the Ancient Greece, fruit of certain rituals religious that over time gained scenic complexity. Thus arose the habit of recreating in the public square the great myths and stories of his religion and its history, in works written by its great playwrights.
along the history, theatrical works played a central role not only in artistic exploration and expression, but also in the debate on the social and political ideas of the moment. For example, in the 20th century, during the artistic explosion of the vanguards, theater and politics they often came together to educate the masses or expose them to fictional situations conducive to the emergence and debate of certain ideas.
Below we will review in detail each of the general characteristics of a theatrical work.
Characteristics of a play
1. Combine the scenic and the literary
A play is a stage performance, since it takes place on a stage, through actors and other visual elements, but at the same time the performance is governed by a script, that is, by a text theater which is in itself a form of literature.
In this way, when we see a play we are "seeing" the text, that is, a stage version (proposed by the director of the play), based on the literary text (written by the playwright).
For example, the play by William Shakespeare Hamlet It was written in England in 1603, but is still performed on theatrical stages today. This is possible because the original text is interpreted by a contemporary director, who decides how the staging will be done: which parts of the text will be used and which will not, what the setting will be like, how the characters, etc.
2. It proposes something to the audience
The public that attends a play generally does so because it seeks to be entertained, like someone who goes to the cinema. However, theatrical pieces are generally intended not only as a hobby (which would not be a bad thing), but as an event that offers a message or reflection to the spectators.
It doesn't matter if the play is a comedy, a tragedy or some other genre; Whether it suffers or laughs or does both, the play seeks to move the audience and make them live the situations that take place in front of them, live and direct, without the mediation of a storyteller.
In doing so, he invites viewers to take ownership of the characters' experiences and to relive their own: when we see Ophelia suffer from Hamlet's lack of love, we suffer with her and relive that feeling that we have surely experienced ourselves.
In the same way, when we see Antigone suffer for the fate of her dead brother's body, we suffer with her and we question whether the laws of society should always be as rigid as those defended by Creon, the then king of Thebes. This message stays with us after the work has finished and allows us to reflect on our real and immediate surroundings.
3. Everything happens in the present
The theatrical story always takes place immediately and before the eyes of the spectators, although some precise actions may take place offstage, that is, hidden behind the scenes. In cases where the public cannot witness what happened, it is normal for the characters to refer to it, without addressing the audience, so that the latter understands that something happened offstage.
However, in the theater there is no narrator, as in the novels and the stories, so that the public only knows what happens on stage and what the characters themselves comment on their dialogues and soliloquies (interior monologues).
4. Create a world
The same work can be staged in radically different ways if you wish, and this largely depends on the proposed scenario, that is, the way in which the fictional reality contained in the script will be represented. In these scenarios, different elements interact, such as:
The actors, who lend their bodies to the characters so that they take on a life of their own, using clothes (costumes), costumes, masks, makeup or other bodily elements.
The props, that is, the objects that serve to assist the actors in the story, such as swords, plates, glasses, tables, chairs, etc. These mobile elements appear and disappear from the scene as needed, and in some cases are not even present, but are conjured up by the actors themselves and left to the imagination of the audience.
The setting, that is, the decorative elements that tell us where the action takes place and that often change if the characters change their location in the story. For a Hamlet montage, for example, you can reproduce the stone walls of the castle and the red carpets of royalty, or you can leave everything to the imagination of the audience. These decorations can be of different types:
- Permanent, when they are on stage throughout the performance of the work, since there are no important changes in location.
- Simultaneous, when it comes to several different permanent sets (for example, several locations: a garden, a palace and the village street) between which the actors move when the work so requires.
- Mutable, when the sets change according to each scene of the play, rearranging in the dark or behind the curtain before the actors appear.
Special effects, whether lights projected onto the stage, music or sound effects (thunder, rain, bird songs, etc.) that sound at a certain moment of the piece and serve to add drama and expressiveness to what is shown. These elements can also have a symbolic meaning.
It is the director of the play who decides how these elements make up a scenic proposal. It is also possible that the playwright specifies in the text of the play how some of them should be used.
5. It has a certain structure and duration
The structure of a play, that is, the parts that make it up, is always determined by the theatrical script, but that does not mean that the director cannot make his own proposals and alter the structure. In any case, every theatrical work is made up of:
- Acts, that is, great narrative divisions marked by a fall and rise of the curtain (if any) or some similar artifice, since they often imply a change of scenery, the passage of time or some other important aspect within the theatrical story that requires of a stage rearrangement. A play may be made up of a single act, or many.
- Scenes, that is, small narrative divisions within a specific act, whose beginning and end depend on the entrance and exit of the characters on stage. An act can have as many scenes as desired.
Regarding the duration of a work, initially they were considered to last several hours, if not entire evenings. Today, they are much shorter in style, ranging in length from one to three hours, sometimes with interludes or breaks in between.
6. The “fourth wall”
One of the fundamental principles of theater has to do with the so-called "fourth wall", which is invisible and is through which we observe the work. Every scenario supposes a situation and a represented place, from which we can see the floor, the ceiling and the sides (where the actors enter and leave), but the characters, on the other hand, cannot see us.
That is why they often look in our direction to observe the landscape, or to talk to themselves, since that "invisible wall" or "fourth wall" hides the audience. Something similar happens in the cinema, in which the characters rarely look towards the camera that films them.
In some works, however, the fourth wall can be “broken”, making the characters address the audience, say things to them or incorporate them on stage in one way or another. This is particularly common in street theater or where the audience is onstage.