What is a dramatic convention?
- Introduction
- How drama convention can be used
- Drama conventions and stage space
- Drama scripts
- Process drama
Introduction
The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum describes drama conventions in two ways, as:
established ways of working in drama (e.g., hot seating, role on the wall, freeze-frame images) that explore meaning or deepen understanding; or established practices in theatre (e.g., the soliloquy, aside).
(The Arts in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 48.)
How drama convention can be used
Drama conventions can be used to:
- establish role
- deepen belief in roles and in the drama
- slow the drama to deepen the experience
- express meaning and ideas
- symbolise the real world as reflected in the drama
- reflect on drama and learning.
Drama conventions are used to explore and shape the elements of drama, such as role, time, space, action, tension, and focus. For example, participants may use role on the wall to explore and clarify their ideas about a character. Using flashback or flashforward lets participants explore events that happened before, or will follow after, the dramatic present. Mimed activity represents a symbolic use of space. Freeze frame can be used to represent a significant moment in a drama.
From ancient times to the present, drama conventions have arisen from the practice of making drama. Conventions are used to create the imagined world and tell a story to the audience. They create the space, shape the action, and define the relationship between the actors and the audience.
Drama has evolved as playwrights, performers, and participants choose different conventions to tell their stories and as they modify the ways in which they use these conventions. For example, in many of their plays, Greek playwrights used a chorus as an integral part of the drama, to dance, sing, and comment on the action. The chorus in epic (Brechtian) theatre also comments on the action but is used to break into that action, forcing the audience to think about what is happening and distancing them from becoming emotionally involved with the characters. Certain sets of drama conventions can be recognised as typical of a particular period or style of theatre.
Drama conventions and stage space
Drama conventions connect closely with the way a drama is played on a stage space. For example, do the actors use the whole stage space? Are they present at all times, or do they exit and enter the space? Will the actors use conventions such as aside or soliloquy to engage with the audience (project through the “fourth wall” at the front of the stage) or stay contained within the stage space?
How theatre technologies (sets, props, lighting) are used is central to defining the stage space and affects the ways in which performance conventions are used. (Read more about stage spaces in the teachers’ notes for poster 4.)
Drama scripts
Drama is recorded in the form of scripts, which also observe certain conventions, including:
- the way the action is structured, for example, into acts and scenes
- the use of stage directions to indicate setting or how certain lines should be delivered
- the use of dialogue and monologue or soliloquy to give voice to the characters.
Process drama
Drama conventions are also used in process drama, which is not intended for performance to an external audience. In process drama, there is a fusion of actor and audience; participants in a process drama may be both at different times.
Teachers use conventions in process drama to help the participants create, explore, and understand an imagined world. The teacher’s goal is to invite students to use their own understandings of the everyday world in a new or unfamiliar context. Using conventions allows the students to explore either a blanket role or a highly developed individual role, to create a drama space, to explore a situation, and to reflect on what has been experienced.