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Introducing drama — what drama is and how it began

Drama is a literary form intended primarily for performance. Unlike narrative (novels, short
stories), drama is enacted: meaning is produced through dialogue, action, gesture, spectacle,
and the relation between performers and audience. Because it happens in public, drama
operates as a social event: it reflects values, models behaviour, questions institutions and —
often — becomes a forum for public debate.

Origins

• Early drama grows out of ritual, myth and communal performance: Greek Dionysian
rites, Sanskrit temple and court theatre, medieval religious pageants and folk ritual.

• As ritual shapes into art, conventions (chorus, masks, rasa, morality figures) are
retained and refined into genres (tragedy, comedy, morality play, etc.).

Why drama matters

• It produces embodied knowledge: ethical questions are seen and felt through actors’
bodies.

• It is immediately social: audience response (laughter, outrage, catharsis) completes

the work.

• It is politically and culturally influential because it publicly stages social relations.

2. Key concepts / theoretical tools

Aristotle — Poetics

• Mimesis: drama imitates human action.

• Tragedy’s purpose: to arouse pity and fear and bring about catharsis (an emotional
purgation/clarification). Catharsis explains why audiences are moved by tragic events.

• Hamartia: the tragic error or frailty that precipitates reversal.

• Six elements of tragedy (Aristotle’s ranking):

1. Plot (mythos) — arrangement of incidents (most important).

2. Character (ethos) — agents whose choices animate the plot.

 3. Thought (dianoia) — themes, arguments and ideas voiced by characters.

4. Diction (lexis) — the language and style of the play.

5. Melody (melos) — musical elements (chorus, songs).

6. Spectacle (opsis) — visual display (staging, scenery; Aristotle regards this as

least artistically important but obviously crucial in performance).

Indian dramatic theory — Nāṭyaśāstra and rasa

• Classical Indian theatre emphasises rasa (aesthetic emotion/flavour) rather than

catharsis. Rasas (śṛṅgāra, karuṇa, vīra, bhayānaka, etc.) are evoked through gesture
(abhinaya), music, and stage conventions. Kalidasa’s courtly plays and Sanskrit
dramaturgy focus on aesthetic experience.

3. Characteristics of drama

Drama constructs meaning by combining core elements

Setting — time, place and social environment. Example: the small domestic space of A Doll’s
House (Ibsen) is crucial; the home becomes a site of social constraint.

1. Character — protagonist (main character), antagonist (main negative character),

stock characters (that can be easily recognised through recognizable traits).

Example: Jimmy Porter (Look Back in Anger) as complex, frustrated working-class

anti-hero; Nora in Doll’s House is shown as a seemingly playful wife who reveals an
inward moral development.

2. Plot / Structure — exposition → complication → crisis → climax → resolution

(tragedy often ends in catastrophe; comedy in reconciliation).

3. Dialogue & Language — reveals social position and interiority: Shakespeare’s

soliloquies; Osborne’s colloquial rage.

4. Song & Music (melody) — Greek chorus, medieval liturgical songs, modern musical
theatre. Music can be thematic (underscoring), diegetic (part of the story) or symbolic.

5. Gesture & Expression — in Indian theatre, abhinaya; in realist theatre, naturalistic

gestures; in expressionist theatre, amplified, symbolic gestures.
 6. Spectacle & Stagecraft — sets, lighting, costume; e.g., Restoration theatre’s
elaborate costumes vs. Beckett’s spare furniture in Waiting for Godot.

7. Audience relationship — drama is relational: Brecht seeks critical distance; Aristotle

assumes emotional immersion (catharsis); political theatre invites participation.

8. Time & Space conventions — unity of time, place and action in Roman plays,
episodic structures in Shakespeare and modernism; non-linear time in experimental
plays.

4. Evolution of drama

Classical era: Greek, Roman, Sanskrit

• Greek tragedy & comedy: Playwrights included Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,

(tragedy); Aristophanes (comedy).

• Roman: Plautus and Terence adapt Greek comedy for Roman taste; Seneca’s rhetoric
feeds the later European tragic style.

• Sanskrit: Kalidasa (e.g., Abhijñānaśākuntalam) and the Nāṭyaśāstra (Bharata) shape

performance norms and rasa theory.

Medieval drama (Europe) — included Mystery, Miracle and Morality Plays.

Miracle plays presented biblical stories. Miracle plays included the lives of saints.

Quemm Quarritis is the oldest church drama.

Morality plays were the personification of vices and virtues, like those of, death, sin, good
angel, bad angel, etc.

• Forms: Mystery plays (biblical cycles), Miracle plays (lives of saints), Morality
plays (Everyman).

• Castle of Perseverance — long allegorical pageant showing man’s moral test;

spectacle and religious didacticism.

• Everyman — personified virtues and vices teaching moral responsibility.

 • Early English comic interludes: Gammer Gurton’s Needle and Ralph Roister
Doister move drama toward secular comedy.

Renaissance / Elizabethan theatre

• Playhouses (Globe) bring drama to a large urban public. Shakespeare expands forms:
tragedies, comedies, histories, romances. First time tragi-comedy was introduced by
Shakespeare. (eg, Tempest). (here explain tragedies, comedies again)

Another important feature was soliloquies (psychological interiority)

Neoclassical & Restoration

• Neoclassicism (France): rules of decorum, unity of action/time/place (Corneille,

Racine).

• Restoration comedy (England): satiric comedy of manners; sexual politics and wit
(Wycherley, Congreve).

Romanticism & early 19th century

• Rejection of neoclassical strictures: emphasis on individual emotion, nature, the

sublime.

19th century — Realism & Naturalism (detailed; centre Ibsen / Nora)

• Realism: attempt to depict life truthfully. Henrik Ibsen is pivotal: A Doll’s House
(1879) is a social-realist drama that foregrounds the home as the site of gender
oppression. Nora’s trajectory — from playfulness to the realization of her infantilised
status and her final decision to leave — dramatizes the conflict between social role
and individual conscience. Ibsen forces audiences to confront social hypocrisy rather
than merely sympathize.

• Naturalism (Zola-influenced): theatre as scientific; characters determined by heredity

and environment; stage becomes a detailed social environment (slice-of-life).

• Melodrama / well-made play: popular, sensational, moral polarities; commercial

theatre grows (connect this to Girish Chandra Ghosh later in Bengal).

Early–mid 20th century — Modernist experiments, political theatre, and the postwar
shift
 • Expressionism: subjectivity and distorted form (German experiments).

• Epic / Brechtian theatre: Brecht introduces alienation to encourage critique (e.g.,

Mother Courage).

• Theatre of the Absurd: Samuel Beckett — Waiting for Godot (1953) strips plot to
cyclical waiting, repetition and inconclusive action to dramatize existential
uncertainty. The play uses minimal setting (two trees, a road), fragmentary language
and comic-tragic rhythms to present human meaninglessness and dependency.

• Kitchen-sink drama / Angry Young Men (Britain, 1950s): John Osborne’s Look
Back in Anger centers Jimmy Porter’s anger — a new working-class voice in theatre
that attacks complacency and class barriers: raw language, domestic setting, rebellious
tone.

• American modern drama: Eugene O’Neill (psychological tragedy, e.g., Long Day’s
Journey into Night), Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman) critiquing the American
Dream, Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire) exploring desire and social
pressure.

Postmodern & contemporary theatre

• Experimentation with form — documentary theatre, multimedia, devised theatre, site-

specific performance, and an expanded role for television/web dramas and musicals.
Contemporary Indian drama includes experimental and politically engaged forms
(Badal Sircar, Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Dattani).

5. Drama across cultures — forms, concerns and examples (your specified countries)

India

• Classical: Sanskrit drama with emphasis on rasa and stylized performance (Kalidasa).

• Folk & regional forms: Nautanki, Yakshagana, Therukoothu, Ramlila — integrate

dance, music, and community ritual.

• Colonial & nationalist dramas: plays that critiqued colonial policies and exposed
economic exploitation — Dinabandhu Mitra’s Neel Darpan (c.1860) exposing
indigo planters is central. It was translated and staged widely (Girish Chandra
 Ghosh’s commercial staging is often cited as a milestone in Bengali theatre). Such
plays made theatre a sphere of political contestation (see the Censorship section).

• Modern Indian theatre: Rabindranath Tagore and Jyotirindranath Tagore introduced

new aesthetic forms and socially conscious drama; Girish Karnad (Tughlaq) used
history to comment on modern politics; Vijay Tendulkar (Ghashiram Kotwal, Silence!
The Court is in Session) engaged with power, law and gender; Badal Sircar (anti-
establishment, Evam Indrajit), Mohan Rakesh (Aadhe Adhure) and Mahesh Dattani
(Tara) address identity, family, gender and marginality.

America

• Realism and psychological drama: Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee

Williams — focus on family tragedy, social aspiration, and individual failure.

• Contemporary American: Off-Broadway/experimental theatre, musical theatre and

TV drama expanded the forms.

Afro-American theatre

• Lorraine Hansberry — A Raisin in the Sun (1959) deals with race, housing,
aspiration.

• August Wilson — the Pittsburgh Cycle (e.g., Fences) traces Black life, memory, and
systemic injustice across decades. Afro-American theatre centers race, class,
migration and cultural memory.

Europe

• Varied experiments: Brecht (political drama), Beckett/Ionesco (Absurdism),

Pinter/Albee (postwar realism + ambiguity), all contributing differing techniques for
social critique or formal experiment.

6. Types of drama

1. Tragedy — serious action leading to suffering & insight (downfall of the character as
defined by Aristotle) explain. Example: Hamlet, Othello of Shakespeare, Miller’s
Death of a Salesman (modern tragedy of a common man).
 2. Comedy — Comedy is to amuse the audience. It includes puns (witty dialogues),
dance, party, social inversion as in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice.

3. Melodrama — sensational action, exaggerated dialogues, moral polarization (19th-

century popular theatre).

4. Satire — Criticising the evils of society via ridicule

5. Farce — rapid physical comedy, mistaken identities.

6. Realism — Response to the social and political climate of the time, mirroring actual
people, includes everyday speech, socio-culture depiction, causally motivated plots (A
Doll’s House).

7. Naturalism — deterministic slice-of-life (Zola-influenced).

8. Kitchen-sink drama — domestic realism focusing on working-class life (Look Back

in Anger).

9. Expressionist drama — inner states externalized; fragmented form.

10. Absurdist drama — plot undermined, life’s meaninglessness foregrounded (Waiting

for Godot).

11. Epic / Political theatre — Brechtian devices to provoke critique (Mother Courage).

12. Documentary / Verbatim theatre — real texts/voices used on stage.

13. Musical drama — song and dance integrated into storytelling (Broadway and Indian
musical traditions).

14. Medieval morality & mystery plays — didactic, allegorical (Everyman, Castle of
Perseverance).

7. The dramatist in society

The dramatist wears several hats:

• Mirror — reflects social values (e.g., Shakespeare on power, Ibsen on domestic

hypocrisy).
 • Critic / Conscience — exposes injustice and catalyses debate (Dinabandhu Mitra’s
Neel Darpan as critique of plantation exploitation; Tendulkar’s plays on law and
morality).

• Entertainer / Culture-bearer — preserves ritual and vernacular forms (folk theatre).

• Educator / Agitator — Brechtian and street theatre aim to instruct or mobilize (Jan
Natya Manch in India is an example of activist theatre).

• Innovator — formal experimentation that renews language and stage practice

(Beckett’s minimalism, Brecht’s epic devices).

Examples

• Ibsen: forced European audiences to debate gender roles via A Doll’s House.

• John Osborne: channelled post-war disillusionment through Jimmy Porter in Look

Back in Anger.

• Girish Karnad & Tendulkar: used history and local contexts to question authority and
moral complacency in India.

• Mahesh Dattani (Tara): dramatizes gender discrimination and the social construction
of value.

8. Political theatre and social change —

How drama effects social change

1. Visibility — staging marginalized experience in public. Example: Neel Darpan

brought the peasant’s plight into urban awareness.

2. Narrative reframing — retelling dominant stories from alternative perspectives

(postcolonial theatre).

3. Emotional engagement — catharsis or outrage can shift public sentiment (Ibsen’s

moral arguments).

4. Collective witnessing — theatre produces communal spaces for debate (street theatre
mobilises groups).
 5. Direct pedagogy / rehearsal — Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed invites
audiences to rehearse change.

Important examples

• Brecht used epic devices to convert spectators into critics rather than passive
empathizers.

• Street theatre and activist ensembles (e.g., Jan Natya Manch) in India used simple,
mobile performances to reach working-class audiences and raise political
consciousness.

• Feminist plays (Ibsen, Dattani) bring gendered oppression into view and spur debate.

• Postcolonial plays (e.g., Tughlaq by Girish Karnad) use historical allegory to

comment on contemporary politics.

9. Control & censorship of drama — detailed treatment (separate heading)

Why authorities censor drama

• Theatre’s public, persuasive power can mobilise opinion; this makes states and elites
nervous about plays that criticise religion, state, or social order. Censorship is justified
officially as maintaining public order, moral decency or national security; in practice
it often protects powerful interests.

Early English control

• Master of the Revels (Tudor/Stuart period) licensed plays; later Licensing Acts
regulated public performance (e.g., the Licensing Act of 1737 in Britain placed
theatres under stricter government control).

Colonial India — the Dramatic Performances Act (1876)

• The Dramatic Performances Act (1876) gave colonial administrators the power to
prohibit or regulate performances that could "excite feelings of disaffection" or
disturb public order. In practice it curtailed anti-colonial and protest theatre. The Act
is a key legal instrument that institutionalised colonial censorship of stage expression.

Neel Darpan and its consequences

 • Dinabandhu Mitra’s Neel Darpan (c.1860) dramatized the exploitation of indigo
cultivators by planters. The play’s English translation and publication (carried out by
various translators/publishers) provoked strong reactions from planters and colonial
officials.

• Public staging of Neel Darpan, including commercial performances by figures such as

Girish Chandra Ghosh, helped popularise the play but also drew official ire. The
publication and translation of the play led to legal controversies and to punitive
actions against those seen to circulate seditious material — an example of the colonial
state using law and pressure to suppress theatre that threatened economic and political
interests.

Other censored works / reactions

• Your notes mention other provincial protest plays (e.g., Chakradhar Darpan,
Gaekwar Darpan) — these plays, too, faced suppression or controversy when they
exposed exploitative local regimes or challenged princely authority. Translators,
printers and publishers sometimes faced prosecution or fines; in other cases
performances were stopped or actors threatened.

Post-colonial & contemporary censorship

• After independence, states continued to use film censorship boards, theatre licensing
and informal pressure to regulate cultural expression. Contemporary controversies
often pit freedom of expression against claims of offending religious sentiments,
public morality or national unity. Theatre groups resist through court cases, alternative
venues (street and community theatre), and digital dissemination.

Shakespeare

• Demonstrates genre fluidity (comedy, tragedy, history). Use a soliloquy (Hamlet) to

teach interiority and stage psychology.

• Ibsen — A Doll’s House (Realism)

Nora appears cheerful and childlike but is revealed as morally courageous: she
commits forgery to save her husband and ultimately leaves to find herself. The play’s
 realism exposes marriage’s social and legal contradictions and invites debate about
personal freedom vs social responsibility.

John Osborne — Look Back in Anger (Kitchen-sink drama)

• Jimmy Porter is articulate, raw and bitter; the play shifts theatre toward working-
class politics and colloquial speech. The play’s energy lies in character-driven rage
directed at social stagnation.

Samuel Beckett — Waiting for Godot (Absurdist theatre)

• Minimal plot: two men wait for a never-arriving Godot. Themes: existential waiting,
meaninglessness, repetitive human rituals. Staging is spare; language often circular;
comic and tragic tones merge. Use to discuss how form can dramatize philosophical
content.

Eugene O’Neill

• Brought psychological realism and tragic scope to American theatre (e.g., family
tragedy in Long Day’s Journey into Night). Use to teach thick psychological
characterisation and American tragic dimensions.

Dinabandhu Mitra — Neel Darpan

• A colonial-era protest play exposing indigo planters’ exploitation. It’s politically

engaged drama — an example of theatre as exposure and mobilisation. Discuss its
commercial staging by Girish Chandra Ghosh and the legal/political fallout following
translation and publication.

Mahesh Dattani — Tara

• Contemporary Indian drama examining gender, disability and family. The play’s plot
(conjoined twins separated; one twin privileged over the other) dramatizes social
valuation and gender bias. Use to discuss feminist critique, family ethics and how
modern Indian playwrights interrogate tradition/modernity. (give example of Tara and
Dance Like a Man, as explained in class).