Study Guide

Field 166: Theater

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Sample Selected-Response Questions

Competency 0001 
Creating, Performing, and Producing Theater

1. Which job responsibility is most strongly associated with the role of a theater producer?

  1. interpreting the play
  2. holding auditions
  3. obtaining financial support
  4. scheduling rehearsals
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Correct Response: C. This item requires the candidate to identify the roles and responsibilities of performance, production, and administrative personnel involved in theatrical productions. In theater companies that have a producer, the role includes obtaining or providing financial support to produce plays, determining how many performances to schedule, negotiating contracts, and managing the overall budget.

Competency 0001 
Creating, Performing, and Producing Theater

2. Which scenario would generally not require the payment of royalties to produce a copyrighted play?

  1. The script being produced is in the public domain.
  2. The venue is a school and nominal admission will be charged.
  3. The script has been significantly revised.
  4. The play is a charity fund-raiser and the actors are unpaid.
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Correct Response: A. This item requires the candidate to demonstrate knowledge of legal issues (e.g., royalties, copyrights, liability, contracts) related to theatrical productions. Public domain refers to intellectual property that can be used without the need to obtain permission. In theater, royalties do not have to be paid for plays in the public domain. Public domain is based on when the playwright died.

Competency 0002 
Theater Tools, Media, and Techniques

3. Compared with proscenium stages, thrust stages tend to:

  1. promote a greater sense of intimacy between the actors and audience.
  2. allow the use of complex sets that can be easily changed for different scenes.
  3. provide a static boundary for scenes that frames and defines the stage area.
  4. afford all members of the audience the same view of the action on stage.
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Correct Response: A. This item requires the candidate to demonstrate knowledge of various types of performance spaces (e.g., classroom, proscenium stage, thrust, arena, community theater or rented space, dinner theater, immersive theater, outdoor theater) and analyzes how the characteristics of a performance space can influence production decisions. In a proscenium theater the audience is set off from the stage by a vertical plane that is often surrounded on the top and sides by a proscenium arch and on the bottom by the stage floor. The audience views the onstage action from one side. A thrust stage juts out into the space of the audience, such that the audience views the onstage action from three sides, which promotes a greater sense of intimacy between the actors and audience.

Competency 0002 
Theater Tools, Media, and Techniques

4. Typically, costume designers do not bring renderings to the initial production meeting for primarily which reason?

  1. Set designs first must be sketched.
  2. Measurements of the actors first must be taken.
  3. The production's color scheme first must be determined.
  4. The director first must propose the production's overall vision.
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Correct Response: D. This item requires the candidate to analyze the interrelated nature of lighting, costumes, makeup, sound, props, scenery, acting, and direction in creating a unified theatrical production. Theater is a highly collaborative art. The director typically determines an overall vision for the production. Until they have done so, designers should not create renderings of their design ideas.

Competency 0003 
Theater and Culture

5. A documentary style of playwriting that employs an interviewing process to create a script is most characteristic of which playwright?

  1. María Irene Fornés
  2. Suzan-Lori Parks
  3. Lillian Hellman
  4. Anna Deavere Smith
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Correct Response: D. This item requires the candidate to identify and compare the lives, works, and influences of representative dramatic artists across various cultures and historical periods. Anna Deavere Smith is a playwright and actor who has created several monologue-driven productions based on actual events. Her process involves interviewing people who participated in the events. She then creates scripts incorporating the interviews.

Competency 0003 
Theater and Culture

6. In which way did Shakespeare's plays, notably The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, most significantly anticipate the philosophy of modern realist playwriting?

  1. choosing prose over poetry to achieve character authenticity
  2. emphasizing the effect of moral dilemmas on human conduct
  3. exposing the dark harshness of life across different social classes
  4. incorporating tragic and comic elements in the same play
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Correct Response: D. This item requires the candidate to compare the aesthetic philosophies of dramatic works from various cultures and historical periods. Modern realism in theater is characterized by plays that aim to realistically depict life within a theatrical frame of reference. Works by Eugene O’Neill and August Wilson and other realist playwrights combine tragedy and comedy in the same plays, as did Shakespeare in many of his plays.

Competency 0003 
Theater and Culture

7. Use the video1 below to answer the question that follows. To play this video, click the Play icon (screenshot of play icon). You may also use the Pause (screenshot of pause icon), Stop (screenshot of stop icon), and Replay (screenshot of replay icon) features. You may watch the video as many times as you wish.

The video shows a solo performer. She holds a gold-colored fan and makes slow, elegant gestures with it mostly extended from her body. She wears makeup and an elaborate, white and light-blue robed costume. Music plays while she makes her movements. The stage has a low fence separating the stage from the audience. It does not obstruct the view of the performer.

The video shows which style of performance?

  1. Sanskrit theater
  2. Bunraku
  3. Chinese opera
  4. Kabuki
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Correct Response: C. This item requires the candidate to identify and compare the lives, works, and influences of representative dramatic artists across various cultures and historical periods. Chinese opera is a theatrical form that originated in China. It features music, typically strings, elaborate costumes, singing, acrobatics, rigidly defined characters, and folklore narratives, some of which can be seen in the video clip.

Competency 0004 
Responding to and Analyzing Theater

8. In theater, blocking is most equivalent to which aspect of other arts disciplines?

  1. choreographing in dance
  2. editing in media arts
  3. composing in music
  4. mixing color in painting
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Correct Response: A. This item requires the candidate to demonstrate an understanding of how theater relates to other art forms and academic disciplines, including ways that theater has influenced, and been influenced by, other arts; compares participant roles in theater and other arts; identifies ways that the subject matter and terminology of other disciplines relate to theater; and identifies strategies for using theater to enhance understanding in other arts disciplines or academic disciplines. Blocking is the planned arrangement and movement of characters on stage, which is equivalent to choreography in dance, the planned sequence of steps and movements of dancers on stage.

Competency 0004 
Responding to and Analyzing Theater

9. Aristotle made which assertion in his method of dramatic analysis?

  1. Spectacle is the most important element of tragedy.
  2. The hero is essentially virtuous but commits an error in judgment.
  3. An effective tragedy takes place in multiple settings.
  4. Characters should be common, unassuming folk, especially the hero.
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Correct Response: B. This item requires the candidate to demonstrate knowledge of the techniques and vocabulary required to critique theatrical performances and texts. Aristotle’s Poetics is a study of ancient Greek drama. Among his points is that tragedy serves to bring out a catharsis, a purging of emotions, in the spectators so that they leave the play feeling cleansed. The protagonist or tragic hero is the vehicle of catharsis. The hero is essentially a good person, and due to an error in judgment, misfortune befalls them.

Acknowledgments

1An actress is performing the great work of Kun opera, named Mudanting (The Peony Pavilion). Collection: Getty Images Editorial Footage. Credit: Zhang Peng. Getty Images.