What is a play? This is the most difficult form of word art.

Drama is one of the three main types of literature, which simultaneously correlates with three types of art - literature, theater and music.

Dramaturgy is mainly associated with theater as the main form performing arts. On its stage, all the “three unities” that underlie any dramatic work are realized. Their specific concept, intended for performance on stage, has long been called plays. The word “play” itself is of French origin and literally means “excerpt”, “part”, “work”. Otherwise, a play can be called any dramatic work intended for production in the theater, as well as for radio and television performances.

IN musical art A play is understood primarily as a specific name for works of instrumental music. However, there are other meanings, for example, completed musical composition or a short instrumental lyric composition.

Construction of the play

It should be noted that the very concept of a play is purely formal and does not carry any genre or stylistic load. However, as a rule, the title of the play explains or indicates its genre identity: comedy, tragedy, drama, tragicomedy, etc.

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

The logical sequence of action is always prescribed by the following order of elements of the play:

1. Exposition is the introduction of the play. It contains the arrangement characters, describes how the circumstances develop, revealing the reasons why the plot outline begins to unfold. Typically, exposition occurs before the action begins.
2. The plot - here the main conflict of the play begins to unfold.
3. Rising action is a chain of events originating from the conflict of the play.
4. The climax is the peak of the main conflict.
5. The denouement of the action is mainly provoked by the climax, we find out what the heroes are left with in the end: someone loses, wins, and someone dies.

The structure of the play is presented

• dialogues and monologues of characters;
• author's remarks, where the author wants to emphasize, for example, some features of the character's behavior or the setting;
• a list of characters, which is given at the very beginning of the play, indicating the profession or family ties of the characters;
• acts - semantic parts of the play, which in turn are divided into smaller ones - episodes, pictures, phenomena.

Features and genre originality

The main difference between the play and others dramatic works is that it was created exclusively for theater productions.

The play also has a certain chain of plot development, which we talked about just above: exposition - plot - increasing conflict - climax - denouement. It should be noted that this state of affairs prevailed in European theater until the mid-19th century, until the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen reformed the canons of the play. With Ibsen, dramatic production began to carry ideological overtones, and where it usually ended (denouement), for him everything was just beginning. The characters' lines and dialogues began to play a more significant role in the development of the idea and plot. The human voice became the leader in the play, and the psychology of the hero began to emerge more clearly in dramaturgy.

The play, as mentioned earlier, is not a special type or genre of drama, however, it can be staged in any genre, for example, in the comedy genre, where humorous subtext is the driving force of the play. Or, on the contrary, a production in the genre of tragedy - where the plot inevitably moves towards a catastrophic denouement of the action: someone dies or someone is killed. Genre originality helps the viewer enter into the author's style of constructing the play.

You may also be interested in the following articles on this topic.

First, let's go over the basic definitions you'll encounter if you decide to write a play.

Play is a dramatic work intended for performance in the theater. Depending on the complexity and duration of the events embodied, the play is divided into acts and actions. Typically, the first act provides exposition and the beginning, and the last act provides the resolution.

Authorized dramatization is a play created on the material of literary work of art non-theatrical genre: novel, story, poem, etc.; and approved by the author of the revised essay.

Act is a completed part of a dramatic work or theatrical performance. Usually in the theater acts are separated by intermissions. In turn, the act can be divided into smaller parts: phenomena, episodes, scenes, pictures.

Buff- in dramaturgy - the introduction into the fabric of a play of elements of buffoonery, buffoonery or circus performance.

Deletion- in a play - a part of the text removed by the director during the preparation of the performance, for reasons of production or other nature.

Action- a completed part of a play or performance, suggesting the development of events. There are external and internal actions.

External action- a rapid, complex, confusing development of events that is not related to the disclosure of the characters of the characters.

Inner action- changes that occur in the worldview of the heroes against the backdrop of relatively simple events.

Actor- a character participating in the play.

re-enactment- processing of narrative, prose or poetic work for theater or cinema. The dramatization takes the form of a play with logically structured action.

Intrigue- in dramaturgy - a method of organization dramatic action through complex twists and turns. Intrigue is created by the conscious conditions of one of the fighting parties or arises as a result of a random combination of circumstances. With the help of intrigue, the playwright achieves special tension in the action and interests the viewer in its development.

Painting- in drama, opera, ballet - a completed part of the act. The pictures are separated from each other by a short break, during which the curtain falls, the audience remains in their seats, and a quick change of scenery takes place on the stage.

Melodrama- a play characterized by: acute intrigue; exaggerated emotionality; a sharp contrast between good and evil; morally instructive tendency.

One act play- a play in which all the events fit into one act. One-act plays are characterized by simplicity of exposition and simplicity of conflict.

Shepherd drama- V medieval Europe- a genre of small plays in which the conventional rural life gallant shepherds and shepherdesses, endowed with the feelings, manners and language of court aristocrats.

Rework- adaptation of a foreign play to the peculiarities of life of the country for which the revised text is intended. The alteration is carried out by moving the location of the action, changing the names of the characters, etc.

Prologue- the introductory part of the play, a picture that precedes the main action. Prologue:
- or has an allegorical character;
- or transmits events that prepare the main action.

Poissard genre- a type of 18th-century play that used crude, vernacular slang.

Radio play- an independent type of dramatic works that reflect the movement of thoughts and feelings of the characters, their development and struggle. Usually, the development of the action of a radio play is determined by its presenter. Often a radio play is a monologue, including effective episodes.

Director's copy- a copy of the play with notes in the margins of the assistant director leading the performance. The director's copy records the external side of the performance: cues for the performers' entrances, changes in light, scenery, moments of lowering the curtain, mise-en-scène of the play, stage effects, descriptions of makeup, costume, etc. are noted.

Remarque- an author's note, explanation or instruction for the reader, director and actor in the text of the play. The remark contains brief description the setting of the action, appearance, manner of pronunciation and behavioral characteristics of the characters.

Scene — separate part action, act, play or performance.

Tragedy of fate- a genre of German melodrama of the early 19th century, which is based on the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bpredestination from above, about the inevitable fate that governs human life. Plays of this genre are characterized by: an intricate plot; mystical visions haunting the heroes; fatal omens; mysterious premonitions.

Trilogy- three plays united by a common idea, plot sequence, characters, and a single plan of the author. Moreover, each of the plays in the trilogy is an independent, complete work.

The final- The final scene is the culmination of the entire work. The opera finales alternate between solo, ensemble and choral episodes.

Volksstück- genre of German drama of the 18th-19th centuries; plays based on folk life, grotesque-comic or satirical nature. There are anonymous Volksstück plays staged by non-professional actors and literary dramas, staged on a professional stage.

Episode- an independent, complete scene of a dramatic work related to its main theme.

Epilogue- the scene that ends the play and follows after the denouement. In Renaissance drama, an epilogue is an address to the viewer in the form of a monologue, containing the author's interpretation of events and summarizing the idea of ​​the play. In mid-20th century drama, the epilogue is often placed at the beginning of the action.

Phenomenon- part of an act in which a change occurs in the composition of the actors. Each phenomenon is determined by the logic of action development.

RULES FOR DESIGNING THE TEXT OF A PLAY (how to design a play):

Title of the work

number of actions (for example, in two actions)

Characters:

1st Character. (dot)

2nd Actor. (dot)

3rd Character. (dot)

Act one
Scene one

Initial extended remark.

1st Character ((remark, in italics, a period is placed outside the brackets ).

Character's text. (Internal remark, Also written in italics, the period is placed inside the bracket. ) Continuation of the character's text.

Extended remark.

2nd Actor. Character's text. (Internal remark, italics .)

Continuation of the character's text.

Extended remark.

If after an extended remark there is Continuation of the text of the speaking character (then it is formatted without paragraph indentation) .

3rd Character (remark, italics). Character's text.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

An interval is made between the extended remark and the text of the speaking character.

A curtain (or The End)

Same as piesa, see this word. Dictionary foreign words, included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. PLAY in general literary or musical. work; in the strictest sense, a dramatic work. Dictionary of foreign words included in... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

- (French piece “thing”, “piece”) as a dramatic term is used for those works that are difficult to attribute to any of the genres already canonized by the theory. Yes, in history French theater we meet the word “play” in... ... Literary encyclopedia

And (obsolete) play, plays, women. (French pièce). 1. Dramatic work. Stage a new play. Translated play. “In dramatic plays... he knows how to arouse noble passions in us.” Nekrasov. 2. A small piece of music (music).... ... Dictionary Ushakova

PLAY, s, women. 1. A dramatic work for theatrical performance. 2. A short musical instrumental lyric or virtuoso composition. P. for button accordion. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

PLAY, play for women, French. dramatic, theatrical or musical composition. Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary. IN AND. Dahl. 1863 1866 … Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary

Noun, g., used. often Morphology: (no) what? plays, why? play, (see) what? play, what? play, about what? about the play; pl. What? plays, (no) what? plays, what? plays, (see) what? plays, what? plays, about what? about plays 1. A play is a dramatic... ... Dmitriev's Explanatory Dictionary

play- PLAY, PLAY, PLAY s, w. piece f. 1. Essay (scholarly); document. PPE. I know how much you love to read and are curious, for this reason I am enclosing one play, which is written as better than that it is forbidden. 1744. M. P. Bestuzhev Ryumin. // AB 2 230 ... Historical Dictionary Gallicisms of the Russian language

play- y, w. 1) A dramatic work for theatrical performance. [Treplev:] She... is against my play, because she is not playing, but Zarechnaya. She doesn't know my play, but she already hates it (Chekhov). Synonyms: drama/ma 2) A little musical... ... Popular dictionary of the Russian language

play- a literary work intended for stage performance. Rubric: structure of a dramatic work Part: act Other associative connections: dramatic genres Play drama, comedy are the most difficult form of literature, difficult because ... Terminological dictionary-thesaurus in literary studies

Books

• Play, notes, scene. A musical play for children in two acts. A fascinating journey into the fairy-tale plot of the book “The Red-haired Dreamer with Green Eyes”, Sergei Aleksandrovich Kazakevich. Near the fabulously beautiful Valdai lakes they live their fabulous life magical cats and cats, raising growing kittens. Danger and unusual adventures await them. Here a bird can carry away... eBook
• Play, G. Fauré. This book will be produced in accordance with your order using Print-on-Demand technology.

Reprint sheet music edition "Pi?ce". Genres: Pieces; For treble instrument, piano; Scores featuring… To understand what a play is, you need to know why and why the play itself exists. literary word

in human culture, why is it more important than the definition that is formulated logically, accurately and clearly. And why is this naked and irrefutable logic perceived by only a few, but a literary fabrication by millions, if not billions.

Man is an emotional being Human nature, it turns out, is this: a thought that is not colored by intense emotion is not able to enter the information space of most specific individuals. After all, the same mathematics, as a system of certain knowledge, even purely formally is much easier the more

The work of Leo Tolstoy is indicative in this regard. As an example, he clearly described the character of the same Natasha Rostova on many pages, but this description did not linger in people’s heads for a moment. And suddenly we see her dancing to the guitar of her distant relative, enthusiastically looking at the night native and Russian sky, absorbing with all her awakening feminine nature the glances of men cast on her body... And every person instantly understood her, because poetic perception awakened peace. This is what it is to transmit a bunch of information about anything through the emotional channels of human consciousness into its information field.

A play is a composition for stage, radio and television performances

People who have never worked out literary creativity Having read the title of this section, they will not even be interested in the meaning of what was said. They won’t remember that actors walk across the stage, and each of them has their own unique character. inner world; they won’t think about how hard the director, playwright, artist, prop makers, stage technicians worked on a specific performance... But these are all worlds, worlds, worlds that come together in order to create an artificial Universe in which important thoughts should come to life. And when everything works out, not a single answer to the question “what is a play” is able to accommodate the action that unfolds over the course of two or three hours before the eyes of the audience.

An important formality

And yet, what is a play? The term is quite a set of dialogues between characters that they utter as the plot develops. But in the case when the author, albeit unconsciously, adjusts the speeches of fictional characters to his understanding and vision of what is happening in the world in which he lives, then the truth of life dies, and the words sound in vain. Through the speeches of the heroes of the work, it is necessary to show exactly what the character himself sees, and not the author. There is no room in the play to further explain something, to further tell the viewer, as is done in novels and poems. That is why writing dramatic works is the most difficult form of verbal art.

More alive than life itself

Once Gogol was asked what the play “The Inspector General” was. At first the writer became gloomy and withdrawn, and after an hour or two, when the questioner forgot to think about his question, the genius answered that this is something that is more alive than life itself, because not years, but minutes flow. And he is infinitely right, because every plot twist, the appearance of new characters is a multidimensional allegory, and every single phrase is like a revelation. This definition is the essence of what a play is. After all, the viewer, even an inexperienced one, instantly sees through the deception, and the written masterpiece dies without being born. For all time in Russian Empire Over 20,000 plays were written, but very few live on the stages of the world to this day - only 7. The mystical number of perfection...

The play is form literary work, written by a playwright, which typically consists of dialogue between characters and is intended to be read or performed theatrically; a small piece of music.

Use of the term

The term "play" refers to both the written texts of playwrights and their theatrical performances. Few playwrights, such as George Bernard Shaw, gave no preference regarding whether their plays would be read or performed on stage. A play is a form of drama that is based on a conflict of a serious and complex nature.. The term “play” is used in a broad sense - regarding the dramatic genre (drama, tragedy, comedy, etc.).

Play in music

A piece in music (in this case the word comes from the Italian pezzo, literally “piece”) is an instrumental work, often small in volume, which is written in period form, simple or complex 2-3 partial form or in rondo form. The title of a musical piece often defines its genre basis - dance (waltzes, polonaises, mazurkas by F. Chopin), march ("March tin soldiers"from the "Children's Album" by P. I. Tchaikovsky), song ("Song without Words" by F. Mendelssohn").

Origin

The term “play” is of French origin. In this language the word piece includes several lexical meanings: part, piece, work, excerpt. Literary form plays have come a long way from ancient times to modern times. Already at the theater Ancient Greece two formed classic genre dramatic performances - tragedy and comedy. Later development theatrical arts enriched the genres and varieties of drama, and, accordingly, the typology of plays.

Genres of the play. Examples

A play is a form of literary work dramatic genres, among which:

Development of the play in literature

In literature, a play was initially viewed as a formal, generalized concept that indicated that a work of art belonged to the dramatic genre. Aristotle (“Poetics”, Sections V and XVIII), N. Boileau (“Message VII to Racine”), G. E. Lessing (“Laocoon” and “Hamburg Drama”), J. W. Goethe (“Weimar Court Theatre” ) used the term “play” as a universal concept that applies to any genre of drama.

In the 18th century Dramatic works appeared, the titles of which included the word “play” (“The Play about the Accession of Cyrus”). In the 19th century the name “play” was used to denote a lyric poem. Playwrights of the 20th century sought to expand the genre limits of drama by using not only different dramatic genres, but also other types of art (music, vocals, choreography, including ballet, cinema).

Compositional structure of the play

The compositional structure of the play's text includes a number of traditional formal elements:

• title;
• list of characters;
• character text – dramatic dialogues, monologues;
• stage directions (author's notes in the form of indicating the location of the action, character traits or a specific situation);

The textual content of the play is divided into separate complete semantic parts - actions or acts that can consist of episodes, phenomena or pictures. Some playwrights gave their works an author's subtitle, which indicated the genre specificity and stylistic orientation of the play. For example: “discussion play” by B. Shaw “Getting Married”, “parabola play” by B. Brecht “ a kind person from Sichuan."

Functions of a play in art

The play had a strong influence on the development of the arts. World-famous artistic (theatrical, musical, cinematic, television) works are based on the plots of the plays:

• operas, operettas, musicals, for example: W. A. ​​Mozart’s opera “Don Giovanni, or the Punished Libertine” is based on the play by A. de Zamora; the source of the plot of the operetta “Truffaldino from Bergamo” is the play by C. Goldoni “The Servant of Two Masters”; the musical "West Side Story" - an adaptation of W. Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet";
• ballet performances, for example: the ballet “Peer Gynt”, staged based on the play of the same name by G. Ibsen;
• cinematographic works, for example: the English film “Pygmalion” (1938) - a film adaptation of the play of the same name by B. Shaw; Feature Film“Dog in the Manger” (1977) is based on the play of the same name by Lope de Vega.

Modern meaning

The interpretation of the concept of a play as universal definition belonging to dramatic genres, which is widely used in modern literary criticism And literary practice. The concept of "play" is also applied to mixed dramatic works, combining the characteristics of different genres (for example: comedy-ballet, introduced by Moliere).

The word play comes from French piece, which means piece, part.