Lecture 1 - Introduction

This is the 101 Introduction to Theatre and Drama Arts. Welcome! This is the first lecture of the televised series. Just to get us straight and be sure that we are all understanding where we are and what we need, let me enumerate first what you will need during the semester. 1. You will need the means by which to see these videotaped programs each week. Obviously, you are doing it by some particular means at this moment, but you will need to be sure that you have these available for you every week. These will be a series of lectures that will be given in a television studio or interviews with various individuals who are professionals in creating film, television, and theater. Some of this material will be presented in a straightforward lecture fashion, which you're probably used to in terms of a classroom, but other parts will be a series of conversations. So, you will need to listen and follow these and pick up the important points as they arise. 2. You will need the textbook. The video portion of this course should be regarded as an addition to and supplementary to the text. Therefore, you will need to read the appropriate sections assigned in the text in regard to and in relationship to the lectures and the interviews that you are going to receive here over the television set. 3. You will need a guide to the television course. This particular guide will give you a program by program breakdown. It will give you some idea of the major points to be covered in each program and it will provide you with some review questions for each of the lectures and interviews. This will help you to see if you have picked up and understood the major points of the lectures and interviews. 4. You will need the syllabus for this particular semester. Every semester, the syllabus to some extent will change because there will be different kinds of assignments. The syllabus will give you the specific assignments, the dates for the assignments and the examinations, the grading scale, and various other pertinent information that you are going to need in order to take this course. The course is called Introduction to Theatre and Drama Arts because in these days, in fact, drama can be received in a variety of ways. Drama can be experienced by going to the theater and seeing a play, but it can also be experienced through film, movies, or television. All of these are methods of delivery that take you to the fictive world that drama creates. Therefore, I am using the word "drama" here to refer to the written play or what we usually call it in the theater, the script, which is the written form that we are working from. Well, let's start by talking about the advantages and disadvantages of each of these means of delivery. We will discuss small screen, big screen, and no screen. Let's start with the most familiar to you, which is television of the small screen. Advantages: 1. Convenience - There are no special requirements for enjoyment. There's no need to dress up and you can watch it from the comfort of your own home. 2. Scheduling - Television is available to you at any time. Time, all you have to do is turn the power on, and there it is. In fact, if you are not even at home and you wish to see a particular program, then the video recorder can take care of that problem. It can be video recorded, shifted, and then looked at whenever you wish, at your own choosing.3. The environment, the environment is your environment. It's your private habitat. You make your own choices as to what you want to see and in many ways, when you want to see it. So, therefore, this environment is yours. You do the inviting, you bring it into your home, into your habitat. It is, in fact, this that in many ways makes the people who appear on television become our friends, whether we think of them or not. They are people who come into our living circumstances, they are people that we become, at least characters that we become acquainted with. So, therefore, the environment is our environment, for there is a variety of form and subject matter is endless. There are now hundreds of channels available to you, available especially if you have cable. You can make your choice as to what you enjoy and what you want to see. In this particular course, we're going to deal with the fictive kind of television, and that is the television that creates stories or presents stories that have characters, plots, action, whatever. But television itself is endless in the variety that is possible here. The advantages, it is free. That is, it is free and you pay no money upfront, unless of course you have a cable service, in which case you have to pay your cable bill. But essentially, commercial television is free. Although eventually, in one way or another, you may well pay for it. That is in the form of commercials that you are going to sit through, and that you're going perhaps to be influenced by, that will then send you out of your home to buy the particular product that you saw touted on television. And so, at that point, you are now helping pay for that program which you saw on your television set. Those are the advantages of television. Let's talk about the disadvantages. The disadvantages are, you are alone or you are in small groups. There is then no camaraderie which is going to develop, and the experience becomes quite a singular one. Therefore, your reaction while watching it by yourself is quite different from the one that you might have if you were part of a larger group and audience in some way or another. Another disadvantage, number two, it is two-dimensional. It is the flat screen that you have there in front of you. Three, the communication is all one way. You are a receiver, you get it, but whatever your reactions are, there is no return back to the screen. There is no notice, there is no return communication possible from you to that which you are viewing. In some way or another, television can become so habit-forming that we can almost become immune to the experience. In other words, we become so used to it that we forget that television can indeed be an artistic experience and can indeed be something special. Film, the movies, the big advantages: Scheduling. Now, while it is not nearly as convenient in terms of scheduling as the television set is, in most cases, films are available throughout the day. They have their starting times, and as long as you get there at the starting time, you can see the film that is shown many times.