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109-591: The trophies take the form of a modelled statuette, a figure representing Drama , designed by Frank Dobson RA , a former Professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art . Three of the awards are given in the names of former Evening Standard notables: In 2009, the Special Award was given in the name of Evgeny Lebedev , executive director of the Evening Standard . In 1980, noting

218-484: A Greek word meaning "deed" or " act " ( Classical Greek : δρᾶμα , drâma ), which is derived from "I do" ( Classical Greek : δράω , dráō ). The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional generic division between comedy and tragedy . In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word play or game (translating the Anglo-Saxon pleġan or Latin ludus )

327-408: A stage before an audience , presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts , unlike other forms of literature , is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. Mime is a form of drama where the action of a story is told only through the movement of the body. Drama can be combined with music :

436-745: A ceremony again at the Savoy Hotel on 17 November 2013. The 2014 winners were announced in a ceremony at the London Palladium on 30 November 2014. The 2015 winners were announced in a ceremony at the Old Vic Theatre on 22 November 2015. The 2016 winners were announced in a ceremony again at the Old Vic Theatre on 13 November 2016. The 2017 winners were announced in a ceremony at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 3 December 2017. The 2018 winners were announced in

545-524: A ceremony again at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 18 November 2018. The 2019 winners were announced in a ceremony at the London Coliseum on 24 November 2019. The 2022 winners were announced in a ceremony at The Ivy on 11 December 2022. The 2023 winners were announced in a ceremony at Claridge's Hotel on 19 November 2023. List of existing articles for individual years: Also known as The Sydney Edwards Award for Best Director from 1979. Renamed

654-407: A certain exaggeration, the relationship of the imitation to the object it imitates being something like the relationship of dancing to walking. Imitation always involves selecting something from the continuum of experience, thus giving boundaries to what really has no beginning or end. Mimêsis involves a framing of reality that announces that what is contained within the frame is not simply real. Thus

763-594: A complementary, fantasized desire to achieve a return to an eternally static pattern of predation by means of " will " expressed as systematic mass-murder became the metaphysical argument (underlying circumstantial, temporally contingent arguments deployed opportunistically for propaganda purposes) for perpetrating the Holocaust amongst the Nazi elite. Insofar as this issue or this purpose was ever even explicitly discussed in print by Hitler's inner-circle, in other words, this

872-657: A famous comparison between the way the world is represented in Homer 's Odyssey and the way it appears in the Bible. From these two seminal texts Auerbach builds the foundation for a unified theory of representation that spans the entire history of Western literature, including the Modernist novels being written at the time Auerbach began his study. In his essay, " On The Mimetic Faculty "(1933) Walter Benjamin outlines connections between mimesis and sympathetic magic , imagining

981-438: A higher to a lower estate " and so being removed to a less ideal situation in more tragic circumstances than before. He posited the characters in tragedy as being better than the average human being, and those of comedy as being worse. Michael Davis, a translator and commentator of Aristotle writes: At first glance, mimesis seems to be a stylizing of reality in which the ordinary features of our world are brought into focus by

1090-598: A hundred million. The self-contained nature of Bhramyoman, with all equipment and even the stage being carried by the troop itself, allows staging shows even in remote villages, giving wider reach. Pioneers of this industry include Achyut Lahkar and Brajanath Sarma . Rabindranath Tagore was a pioneering modern playwright who wrote plays noted for their exploration and questioning of nationalism, identity, spiritualism and material greed. His plays are written in Bengali and include Chitra ( Chitrangada , 1892), The King of

1199-541: A late "hybrid morality" and one of the earliest examples of an English revenge play , brings together the classical story of Orestes with a Vice from the medieval allegorical tradition, alternating comic, slapstick scenes with serious, tragic ones. Also important in this period were the folk dramas of the Mummers Play , performed during the Christmas season. Court masques were particularly popular during

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1308-483: A mirror. So painters or poets, though they may paint or describe a carpenter, or any other maker of things, know nothing of the carpenter's (the craftsman's) art, and though the better painters or poets they are, the more faithfully their works of art will resemble the reality of the carpenter making a bed, the imitators will nonetheless still not attain the truth (of God's creation). The poets, beginning with Homer, far from improving and educating humanity, do not possess

1417-697: A more conservative development over a somewhat longer period of time. Pantomime (informally "panto"), is a type of musical comedy stage production, designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is still performed throughout the United Kingdom, generally during the Christmas and New Year season and, to a lesser extent, in other English-speaking countries. Modern pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing, employs gender-crossing actors, and combines topical humour with

1526-573: A particular character or may be the "invisible narrator" or even the "all-knowing narrator" who speaks from above in the form of commenting on the action or the characters. In Book III of his Republic (c. 373 BC), Plato examines the style of poetry (the term includes comedy, tragedy , and epic and lyric poetry ): all types narrate events, he argues, but by differing means. He distinguishes between narration or report ( diegesis ) and imitation or representation ( mimesis ). Tragedy and comedy, he goes on to explain, are wholly imitative types;

1635-511: A possible origin of astrology arising from an interpretation of human birth that assumes its correspondence with the apparition of a seasonally rising constellation augurs that new life will take on aspects of the myth connected to the star. Belgian feminist Luce Irigaray used the term to describe a form of resistance where women imperfectly imitate stereotypes about themselves to expose and undermine such stereotypes. In Mimesis and Alterity (1993), anthropologist Michael Taussig examines

1744-683: A skiing accident in Quebec in March 2009. The 2007 Awards lunchtime ceremony took place at the Savoy Hotel in London on 27 November 2007. The judges' assessments of the winners are online. The 2008 winners were announced in a ceremony at the Royal Opera House , Covent Garden, on 24 November 2008. The judges' assessments are online. The 2009 winners were announced in a ceremony, again at

1853-672: A small fraction of the work of five dramatists, however, has survived to this day: we have a small number of complete texts by the tragedians Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , and the comic writers Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century, Menander . Aeschylus' historical tragedy The Persians is the oldest surviving drama, although when it won first prize at the City Dionysia competition in 472 BC, he had been writing plays for more than 25 years. The competition (" agon ") for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BC; official records (" didaskaliai ") begin from 501 BC when

1962-578: A sophisticated presentation of contrasting human behaviour. No early Roman tragedy survives, though it was highly regarded in its day; historians know of three early tragedians— Quintus Ennius , Marcus Pacuvius , and Lucius Accius . From the time of the empire, the work of two tragedians survives—one is an unknown author, while the other is the Stoic philosopher Seneca . Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are fabula crepidata (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his Phaedra , for example,

2071-428: A story loosely based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale . It is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers. Part of the appeal of amateur dramatics pantomime productions is seeing well-known local figures on stage. These stories follow in the tradition of fables and folk tales . Usually, there

2180-542: A story", Dance movements in ballet "are often closely related to everyday forms of physical expression, [so that] there is an expressive quality inherent in nearly all dancing", and this is used to convey both action and emotions; mime is also used. Examples include Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 's Swan Lake , which tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse, Sergei Prokofiev 's ballet Romeo and Juliet , based on Shakespeare's famous play, and Igor Stravinsky 's Petrushka , which tells

2289-459: A very common character in Restoration comedy). The single play that does most to support the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy is probably Wycherley's masterpiece The Country Wife (1675), whose title contains a lewd pun and whose notorious "china scene" is a series of sustained double entendres . During the second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s,

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2398-412: Is A Treatise on Theatre ( Nātyaśāstra ), a compendium whose date of composition is uncertain (estimates range from 200 BC to 200 AD) and whose authorship is attributed to Bharata Muni . The Treatise is the most complete work of dramaturgy in the ancient world. It addresses acting , dance , music , dramatic construction , architecture, costuming , make-up , props , the organisation of companies,

2507-545: Is a dramatic art form that arose during the Renaissance in an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama in which dialogue, dance, and song were combined. Being strongly intertwined with western classical music , the opera has undergone enormous changes in the past four centuries and it is an important form of theatre until this day. Noteworthy is the major influence of the German 19th-century composer Richard Wagner on

2616-404: Is a lesson learned, and with some help from the audience, the hero/heroine saves the day. This kind of play uses stock characters seen in masque and again commedia dell'arte , these characters include the villain (doctore), the clown/servant (Arlechino/Harlequin/buttons), the lovers etc. These plays usually have an emphasis on moral dilemmas , and good always triumphs over evil, this kind of play

2725-415: Is a serious dramatic form that combines drama, music, and dance into a complete aesthetic performance experience. It developed in the 14th and 15th centuries and has its own musical instruments and performance techniques, which were often handed down from father to son. The performers were generally male (for both male and female roles), although female amateurs also perform Nō dramas. Nō drama was supported by

2834-462: Is also very entertaining making it a very effective way of reaching many people. Pantomime has a long theatrical history in Western culture dating back to classical theatre. It developed partly from the 16th century commedia dell'arte tradition of Italy, as well as other European and British stage traditions, such as 17th-century masques and music hall . An important part of the pantomime, until

2943-436: Is sometimes used to refer to the self-consistency of a represented world, and the availability of in-game rationalisations for elements of the gameplay. In this context, mimesis has an associated grade: highly self-consistent worlds that provide explanations for their puzzles and game mechanics are said to display a higher degree of mimesis. This usage can be traced back to the essay "Crimes Against Mimesis". Dionysian imitatio

3052-605: Is the Easter trope Whom do you Seek? (Quem-Quaeritis) ( c.  925 ). Two groups would sing responsively in Latin , though no impersonation of characters was involved. By the 11th century, it had spread through Europe to Russia , Scandinavia , and Italy ; excluding Islamic-era Spain . In the 10th century, Hrosvitha wrote six plays in Latin modeled on Terence 's comedies, but which treated religious subjects. Her plays are

3161-438: Is the concern of the philosopher. As culture in those days did not consist in the solitary reading of books, but in the listening to performances, the recitals of orators (and poets), or the acting out by classical actors of tragedy, Plato maintained in his critique that theatre was not sufficient in conveying the truth. He was concerned that actors or orators were thus able to persuade an audience by rhetoric rather than by telling

3270-443: Is the efficient cause, that is, the process and the agent by which the thing is made. The fourth, the final cause, is the good, or the purpose and end of a thing, known as telos . Aristotle's Poetics is often referred to as the counterpart to this Platonic conception of poetry. Poetics is his treatise on the subject of mimesis. Aristotle was not against literature as such; he stated that human beings are mimetic beings, feeling

3379-455: Is the influential literary method of imitation as formulated by Greek author Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the 1st century BC, who conceived it as technique of rhetoric : emulating, adapting, reworking, and enriching a source text by an earlier author. Dionysius' concept marked a significant departure from the concept of mimesis formulated by Aristotle in the 4th century BC, which was only concerned with "imitation of nature" rather than

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3488-424: Is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance : a play , opera , mime , ballet , etc., performed in a theatre , or on radio or television . Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle 's Poetics ( c.  335 BC )—the earliest work of dramatic theory . The term "drama" comes from

3597-643: Is the task of the dramatist to produce the tragic enactment to accomplish this empathy by means of what is taking place on stage. In short, catharsis can be achieved only if we see something that is both recognisable and distant. Aristotle argued that literature is more interesting as a means of learning than history, because history deals with specific facts that have happened, and which are contingent, whereas literature, although sometimes based on history, deals with events that could have taken place or ought to have taken place. Aristotle thought of drama as being "an imitation of an action" and of tragedy as "falling from

3706-435: Is this narrower sense that the film and television industries, along with film studies , adopted to describe " drama " as a genre within their respective media. The term " radio drama " has been used in both senses—originally transmitted in a live performance. It may also be used to refer to the more high-brow and serious end of the dramatic output of radio . The enactment of drama in theatre , performed by actors on

3815-469: Is used as a synonym of Restoration comedy. After public theatre had been banned by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 with the Restoration of Charles II signalled a renaissance of English drama . Restoration comedy is known for its sexual explicitness, urbane, cosmopolitan wit , up-to-the-minute topical writing, and crowded and bustling plots. Its dramatists stole freely from

3924-479: The Takarazuka Revue . Mimesis Mimesis ( / m ɪ ˈ m iː s ɪ s , m aɪ -/ ; Ancient Greek : μίμησις , mīmēsis ) is a term used in literary criticism and philosophy that carries a wide range of meanings, including imitatio , imitation , nonsensuous similarity, receptivity , representation , mimicry , the act of expression , the act of resembling, and the presentation of

4033-728: The dithyramb is wholly narrative; and their combination is found in epic poetry . When reporting or narrating, "the poet is speaking in his own person; he never leads us to suppose that he is anyone else;" when imitating, the poet produces an "assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture." In dramatic texts, the poet never speaks directly; in narrative texts, the poet speaks as himself or herself. In his Poetics , Aristotle argues that kinds of poetry (the term includes drama, flute music, and lyre music for Aristotle) may be differentiated in three ways: according to their medium , according to their objects , and according to their mode or manner (section I); "For

4142-495: The period of colonial rule under the British Empire , from the mid-19th century until the mid-20th. The earliest-surviving fragments of Sanskrit drama date from the 1st century AD. The wealth of archeological evidence from earlier periods offers no indication of the existence of a tradition of theatre. The ancient Vedas ( hymns from between 1500 and 1000 BC that are among the earliest examples of literature in

4251-438: The satyr play was introduced. Tragic dramatists were required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play (though exceptions were made, as with Euripides' Alcestis in 438 BC). Comedy was officially recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BC. Five comic dramatists competed at

4360-475: The "imitation of other authors." Latin orators and rhetoricians adopted the literary method of Dionysius' imitatio and discarded Aristotle's mimesis . Referring to it as imitation , the concept of mimesis was crucial for Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's theory of the imagination . Coleridge begins his thoughts on imitation and poetry from Plato, Aristotle, and Philip Sidney , adopting their concept of imitation of nature instead of other writers. His departure from

4469-554: The "softer" comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh set out to appeal to more socially diverse audience with a strong middle-class element, as well as to female spectators. The comic focus shifts from young lovers outwitting the older generation to the vicissitudes of marital relations. In Congreve's Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700), the give-and-take set pieces of couples testing their attraction for one another have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on

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4578-433: The 15th to the 19th centuries. The Bhakti movement was influential in performances in several regions. Apart from regional languages, Assam saw the rise of Vaishnavite drama in an artificially mixed literary language called Brajavali . A distinct form of one-act plays called Ankia Naat developed in the works of Sankardev , a particular presentation of which is called Bhaona . Modern Indian theatre developed during

4687-645: The City Dionysia (though during the Peloponnesian War this may have been reduced to three), each offering a single comedy. Ancient Greek comedy is traditionally divided between "old comedy" (5th century BC), "middle comedy" (4th century BC) and "new comedy" (late 4th century to 2nd BC). Following the expansion of the Roman Republic (527–509 BC) into several Greek territories between 270 and 240 BC, Rome encountered Greek drama . From

4796-552: The Dark Chamber ( Raja , 1910), The Post Office ( Dakghar , 1913), and Red Oleander ( Raktakarabi , 1924). Girish Karnad is a noted playwright, who has written a number of plays that use history and mythology, to critique and problematize ideas and ideals that are of contemporary relevance. Karnad's numerous plays such as Tughlaq , Hayavadana , Taledanda , and Naga-Mandala are significant contributions to Indian drama. Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Dattani are amongst

4905-611: The Foundation of the World (1978), René Girard posits that human behavior is based upon mimesis, and that imitation can engender pointless conflict. Girard notes the productive potential of competition: "It is because of this unprecedented capacity to promote competition within limits that always remain socially, if not individually, acceptable that we have all the amazing achievements of the modern world," but states that competition stifles progress once it becomes an end in itself: "rivals are more apt to forget about whatever objects are

5014-815: The Girl ( c.  1300 ), one of the earliest known in English, seems to be the closest in tone and form to the contemporaneous French farces , such as The Boy and the Blind Man . Many plays survive from France and Germany in the late Middle Ages , when some type of religious drama was performed in nearly every European country. Many of these plays contained comedy , devils , villains , and clowns . In England, trade guilds began to perform vernacular " mystery plays ", which were composed of long cycles of many playlets or "pageants", of which four are extant : York (48 plays), Chester (24), Wakefield (32) and

5123-517: The Greek originals, the Roman comic dramatists abolished the role of the chorus in dividing the drama into episodes and introduced musical accompaniment to its dialogue (between one-third of the dialogue in the comedies of Plautus and two-thirds in those of Terence). The action of all scenes is set in the exterior location of a street and its complications often follow from eavesdropping . Plautus,

5232-484: The Guna, for having been so impressed by the exotic technologies of the whites that they raised them to the status of gods. To Taussig this reductionism is suspect, and he argues this from both sides in his Mimesis and Alterity to see values in the anthropologists ' perspective while simultaneously defending the independence of a lived culture from the perspective of anthropological reductionism. In Things Hidden Since

5341-538: The Holocaust was still unfolding. Calasso's earlier book The Celestial Hunter , written immediately prior to The Unnamable Present , is an informed and scholarly speculative cosmology depicting the possible origins and early prehistoric cultural evolution of the human mimetic faculty. In particular, the books first and fifth chapters ("In The Time of the Great Raven" and "Sages & Predators") focuses on

5450-736: The Milton Shulman Award for Best Director from 2014. Also known as The Natasha Richardson Award for Best Actress from 2009 Renamed the Ned Sherrin Award for Best Musical in 2007 Also known as the Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright Also known as the Milton Shulman Award for Outstanding Newcomer Two part award, originally as the Patricia Rothermere Award Drama Drama

5559-511: The Royal Opera House, on Monday, 23 November 2009. The judges' assessments are online. The 2010 winners were announced at a celebratory evening ceremony on Thursday 28 November 2010 in the newly refurbished Savoy Hotel . The 2011 winners were announced in a ceremony at the Savoy Hotel on 20 November 2011. The 2012 winners were announced in a ceremony again at the Savoy Hotel on 25 November 2012. The 2013 winners were announced in

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5668-576: The Spectacle ) Luce Irigaray , Jacques Derrida , René Girard , Nikolas Kompridis , Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe , Michael Taussig , Merlin Donald , Homi Bhabha , Roberto Calasso , and Nidesh Lawtoo. During the nineteenth century, the racial politics of imitation towards African Americans influenced the term mimesis and its evolution. Both Plato and Aristotle saw in mimesis the representation of nature , including human nature, as reflected in

5777-484: The atmosphere at Court and celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester , real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, and sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity's idea of the glamorous Restoration rake (actually never

5886-414: The audience to identify with the characters and the events in the text, and unless this identification occurs, it does not touch us as an audience. Aristotle holds that it is through "simulated representation," mimesis, that we respond to the acting on the stage, which is conveying to us what the characters feel, so that we may empathise with them in this way through the mimetic form of dramatic roleplay. It

5995-898: The audience, competitions, and offers a mythological account of the origin of theatre. Its drama is regarded as the highest achievement of Sanskrit literature . It utilised stock characters , such as the hero ( nayaka ), heroine ( nayika ), or clown ( vidusaka ). Actors may have specialised in a particular type. It was patronized by the kings as well as village assemblies. Famous early playwrights include Bhasa , Kalidasa (famous for Urvashi, Won by Valour , Malavika and Agnimitra , and The Recognition of Shakuntala ), Śudraka (famous for The Little Clay Cart ), Asvaghosa , Daṇḍin , and Emperor Harsha (famous for Nagananda , Ratnavali , and Priyadarsika ). Śakuntalā (in English translation) influenced Goethe's Faust (1808–1832). A distinct form of theatre has developed in India where

6104-433: The beginning of the empire, however, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a broader variety of theatrical entertainments. The first important works of Roman literature were the tragedies and comedies that Livius Andronicus wrote from 240 BC. Five years later, Gnaeus Naevius also began to write drama. No plays from either writer have survived. While both dramatists composed in both genres , Andronicus

6213-546: The cause of the rivalry and instead become more fascinated with one another." In The Unnameable Present , Calasso outlines the way that mimesis, called "Mimickry" by Joseph Goebbels —though it is a universal human ability—was interpreted by the Third Reich as being a sort of original sin attributable to "the Jew." Thus, an objection to the tendency of human beings to mimic one another instead of "just being themselves" and

6322-424: The contemporary French and Spanish stage, from English Jacobean and Caroline plays, and even from Greek and Roman classical comedies, combining the various plotlines in adventurous ways. Resulting differences of tone in a single play were appreciated rather than frowned on, as the audience prized "variety" within as well as between plays. Restoration comedy peaked twice. The genre came to spectacular maturity in

6431-463: The drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance; performers devise a dramatic script spontaneously before an audience. Western drama originates in classical Greece . The theatrical culture of the city-state of Athens produced three genres of drama: tragedy , comedy , and the satyr play . Their origins remain obscure, though by the 5th century BC, they were institutionalised in competitions held as part of festivities celebrating

6540-520: The drama of exemplary morality. The pivotal and innovative contributions of the 19th-century Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen and the 20th-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht dominate modern drama; each inspired a tradition of imitators, which include many of the greatest playwrights of the modern era. The works of both playwrights are, in their different ways, both modernist and realist , incorporating formal experimentation , meta-theatricality , and social critique . In terms of

6649-479: The dramas of the period. Plato wrote about mimesis in both Ion and The Republic (Books II, III, and X). In Ion , he states that poetry is the art of divine madness, or inspiration. Because the poet is subject to this divine madness, instead of possessing "art" or "knowledge" ( techne ) of the subject, the poet does not speak truth (as characterized by Plato's account of the Forms ). As Plato has it, truth

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6758-453: The dramatic text in opera is generally sung throughout; as for in some ballets dance "expresses or imitates emotion, character, and narrative action." Musicals include both spoken dialogue and songs ; and some forms of drama have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue ( melodrama and Japanese Nō , for example). Closet drama is a form that is intended to be read, rather than performed. In improvisation ,

6867-494: The earlier thinkers lies in his arguing that art does not reveal a unity of essence through its ability to achieve sameness with nature. Coleridge claims: [T]he composition of a poem is among the imitative arts; and that imitation, as opposed to copying, consists either in the interfusion of the SAME throughout the radically DIFFERENT, or the different throughout a base radically the same. Here, Coleridge opposes imitation to copying,

6976-446: The early Elizabethan era in England. Characters were often used to represent different ethical ideals. Everyman , for example, includes such figures as Good Deeds, Knowledge and Strength, and this characterisation reinforces the conflict between good and evil for the audience. The Castle of Perseverance ( c.  1400 –1425) depicts an archetypal figure's progress from birth through to death. Horestes ( c.  1567 ),

7085-413: The early nineteenth century Paris , Jean-Gaspard Deburau solidified the many attributes that we have come to know in modern times, including the silent figure in whiteface. Jacques Copeau , strongly influenced by Commedia dell'arte and Japanese Noh theatre, used masks in the training of his actors. Étienne Decroux , a pupil of his, was highly influenced by this and started exploring and developing

7194-514: The entire crew travels performing plays from place to place, with makeshift stages and equipment, particularly in the eastern parts of the country. Jatra ( Bengali for "travel"), originating in the Vaishnavite movement of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Bengal , is a tradition that follows this format. Vaishnavite plays in the neighbouring state of Assam, pioneered by Srimanta Sankardeva , takes

7303-402: The eve of marriage, as in the latter's famous "Proviso" scene. Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife (1697) has a light touch and more humanly recognisable characters, while The Relapse (1696) has been admired for its throwaway wit and the characterisation of Lord Foppington, an extravagant and affected burlesque fop with a dark side. The tolerance for Restoration comedy even in its modified form

7412-522: The first known to be composed by a female dramatist and the first identifiable Western drama of the post-Classical era. Later, Hildegard of Bingen wrote a musical drama, Ordo Virtutum ( c.  1155 ). One of the most famous of the early secular plays is the courtly pastoral Robin and Marion , written in the 13th century in French by Adam de la Halle . The Interlude of the Student and

7521-440: The first use of the Special Award category, Shulman observed that "In 1968 the judges felt that Alan Bennett's work Forty Years On did not fit either the category of a Play or a Musical. But since they liked it so much they gave him the coveted Dobson statuette as a Special Award. In a quarter of a century, only in 1968 had no-one been designated as 'Promising' although it could conceivably be argued that Alan Bennett's Special Award

7630-535: The forms of Ankia Naat and Bhaona . These, along with Western influences, have inspired the development of modern mobile theatre, known in Assamese as Bhramyoman , in Assam. Modern Bhramyoman stages everything from Hindu mythology to adaptations of Western classics and Hollywood movies , and make use of modern techniques, such as live visual effects. Assamese mobile theatre is estimated to be an industry worth

7739-456: The god Dionysus . Historians know the names of many ancient Greek dramatists, not least Thespis , who is credited with the innovation of an actor (" hypokrites ") who speaks (rather than sings) and impersonates a character (rather than speaking in his own person), while interacting with the chorus and its leader (" coryphaeus "), who were a traditional part of the performance of non-dramatic poetry ( dithyrambic , lyric and epic ). Only

7848-635: The government, and particularly the military, with many military commanders having their own troupes and sometimes performing themselves. It is still performed in Japan today. Kyōgen is the comic counterpart to Nō drama. It concentrates more on dialogue and less on music, although Nō instrumentalists sometimes appear also in Kyōgen. Kabuki drama, developed from the 17th century, is another comic form, which includes dance. Modern theatrical and musical drama has also developed in Japan in forms such as shingeki and

7957-400: The knowledge of craftsmen and are mere imitators who copy again and again images of virtue and rhapsodise about them, but never reach the truth in the way the superior philosophers do. Similar to Plato's writings about mimesis, Aristotle also defined mimesis as the perfection and imitation of nature. Art is not only imitation but also the use of mathematical ideas and symmetry in the search for

8066-641: The late 19th century, was the harlequinade . Outside Britain the word "pantomime" is usually used to mean miming , rather than the theatrical form discussed here. Mime is a theatrical medium where the action of a story is told through the movement of the body, without the use of speech. Performance of mime occurred in Ancient Greece , and the word is taken from a single masked dancer called Pantomimus , although their performances were not necessarily silent. In Medieval Europe, early forms of mime, such as mummer plays and later dumbshows , evolved. In

8175-527: The later years of the republic and by means of the Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD), theatre spread west across Europe, around the Mediterranean and reached England; Roman theatre was more varied, extensive and sophisticated than that of any culture before it. While Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BC marks the beginning of regular Roman drama . From

8284-579: The latter referring to William Wordsworth 's notion that poetry should duplicate nature by capturing actual speech. Coleridge instead argues that the unity of essence is revealed precisely through different materialities and media. Imitation, therefore, reveals the sameness of processes in nature. One of the best-known modern studies of mimesis—understood in literature as a form of realism —is Erich Auerbach 's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1953), which opens with

8393-510: The lives of past kings, enhancing the image of the Tudor monarchy. Authors of this period drew some of their storylines from Greek mythology and Roman mythology or from the plays of eminent Roman playwrights such as Plautus and Terence . Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in England during the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. Comedy of manners

8502-672: The major Indian playwrights of the 20th century. Mohan Rakesh in Hindi and Danish Iqbal in Urdu are considered architects of new age Drama. Mohan Rakesh's Aadhe Adhoore and Danish Iqbal's Dara Shikoh are considered modern classics. Chinese theatre has a long and complex history. Today it is often called Chinese opera although this normally refers specifically to the popular form known as Beijing opera and Kunqu ; there have been many other forms of theatre in China, such as zaju . Japanese Nō drama

8611-470: The major themes of Adorno and Horkheimer 's Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1944) , which was itself in dialog with earlier work hinting in this direction by Walter Benjamin who died during an attempt to escape the gestapo . Calasso insinuates and references this lineage throughout the text. The work can be read as a clarification of their earlier gestures in this direction, written while

8720-399: The meaning of mimesis eventually shifted toward a specifically literary function in ancient Greek society. One of the best-known modern studies of mimesis—understood in literature as a form of realism —is Erich Auerbach 's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature , which opens with a comparison between the way the world is represented in Homer 's Odyssey and

8829-481: The medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration—in which case he can either take another personality, as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged—or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us." Though they conceive of mimesis in quite different ways, its relation with diegesis is identical in Plato's and Aristotle's formulations. In ludology , mimesis

8938-571: The memory of Patricia Harmsworth, Viscountess Rothermere , wife of Viscount Rothermere , chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust , which formerly owned the Evening Standard . The two part award recognised those who had given outstanding support to young actors, while also providing a three-year scholarship award for a drama student. Commencing in 2009, the Best Actress award was renamed in tribute to Natasha Richardson , who died after

9047-543: The mid-1670s with an extravaganza of aristocratic comedies. Twenty lean years followed this short golden age, although the achievement of the first professional female playwright, Aphra Behn , in the 1680s is an important exception. In the mid-1690s, a brief second Restoration comedy renaissance arose, aimed at a wider audience. The comedies of the golden 1670s and 1690s peak times are significantly different from each other. The unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden , William Wycherley , and George Etherege reflected

9156-443: The more "real" the imitation the more fraudulent it becomes. It was also Plato and Aristotle who contrasted mimesis with diegesis (Greek: διήγησις). Mimesis shows , rather than tells , by means of directly represented action that is enacted. Diegesis, however, is the telling of the story by a narrator; the author narrates action indirectly and describes what is in the characters' minds and emotions. The narrator may speak as

9265-438: The more popular of the two, wrote between 205 and 184 BC and twenty of his comedies survive, of which his farces are best known; he was admired for the wit of his dialogue and his use of a variety of poetic meters . All of the six comedies that Terence wrote between 166 and 160 BC have survived; the complexity of his plots, in which he often combined several Greek originals, was sometimes denounced, but his double-plots enabled

9374-414: The opera tradition. In his view, there was no proper balance between music and theatre in the operas of his time, because the music seemed to be more important than the dramatic aspects in these works. To restore the connection with the classical drama, he entirely renewed the operatic form to emphasize the equal importance of music and drama in works that he called " music dramas ". Chinese opera has seen

9483-420: The perfect, the timeless, and contrasting being with becoming. Nature is full of change, decay, and cycles, but art can also search for what is everlasting and the first causes of natural phenomena. Aristotle wrote about the idea of four causes in nature. The first, the formal cause , is like a blueprint, or an immortal idea. The second cause is the material cause, or what a thing is made out of. The third cause

9592-415: The person whose character he assumes? / Of course. / Then in this case the narrative of the poet may be said to proceed by way of imitation? / Very true. / Or, if the poet everywhere appears and never conceals himself, then again, the imitation is dropped, and his poetry becomes simple narration. "classical narrative is always oriented towards an explicit there and then, towards an imaginary 'elsewhere' set in

9701-476: The possibilities of mime and refined corporeal mime into a highly sculptural form, taking it outside of the realms of naturalism . Jacques Lecoq contributed significantly to the development of mime and physical theatre with his training methods. While some ballet emphasises "the lines and patterns of movement itself" dramatic dance "expresses or imitates emotion, character, and narrative action". Such ballets are theatrical works that have characters and "tell

9810-405: The proliferation of hypermimetic affects in the digital age. You are aware, I suppose, that all mythology and poetry is a narration of events, either past, present, or to come? / Certainly, he replied. And narration may be either simple narration, or imitation, or a union of the two? / [...] / And this assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture, is the imitation of

9919-459: The reign of Henry VIII . One of the great flowerings of drama in England occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries. Many of these plays were written in verse, particularly iambic pentameter . In addition to Shakespeare, such authors as Christopher Marlowe , Thomas Middleton , and Ben Jonson were prominent playwrights during this period. As in the medieval period , historical plays celebrated

10028-476: The self . The original Ancient Greek term mīmēsis ( μίμησις ) derives from mīmeisthai ( μιμεῖσθαι , 'to imitate'), itself coming from mimos ( μῖμος , 'imitator, actor'). In ancient Greece , mīmēsis was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in particular, with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for beauty, truth , and the good. Plato contrasted mimesis , or imitation , with diegesis , or narrative. After Plato ,

10137-517: The so-called " N-Town " (42). The Second Shepherds' Play from the Wakefield cycle is a farcical story of a stolen sheep that its protagonist , Mak, tries to pass off as his new-born child asleep in a crib; it ends when the shepherds from whom he has stolen are summoned to the Nativity of Jesus . Morality plays (a modern term) emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished in

10246-532: The story of the loves and jealousies of three puppets. Creative drama includes dramatic activities and games used primarily in educational settings with children. Its roots in the United States began in the early 1900s. Winifred Ward is considered to be the founder of creative drama in education, establishing the first academic use of drama in Evanston, Illinois. . The earliest form of Indian drama

10355-410: The terrain of mimesis and its early origins, though insights in this territory appear as a motif in every chapter of the book. In Homo Mimeticus (2022) Swiss philosopher and critic Nidesh Lawtoo develops a relational theory of mimetic subjectivity arguing that not only desires but all affects are mimetic, for good and ill. Lawtoo opens up the transdisciplinary field of "mimetic studies" to account for

10464-512: The three beds: One bed exists as an idea made by God (the Platonic ideal , or form); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's idea; and one is made by the artist in imitation of the carpenter's. So the artist's bed is twice removed from the truth. Those who copy only touch on a small part of things as they really are, where a bed may appear differently from various points of view, looked at obliquely or directly, or differently again in

10573-716: The traditional theoretical discourse of genre, Ibsen's work has been described as the culmination of " liberal tragedy ", while Brecht's has been aligned with an historicised comedy. Other important playwrights of the modern era include Antonin Artaud , August Strindberg , Anton Chekhov , Frank Wedekind , Maurice Maeterlinck , Federico García Lorca , Eugene O'Neill , Luigi Pirandello , George Bernard Shaw , Ernst Toller , Vladimir Mayakovsky , Arthur Miller , Tennessee Williams , Jean Genet , Eugène Ionesco , Samuel Beckett , Harold Pinter , Friedrich Dürrenmatt , Dario Fo , Heiner Müller , and Caryl Churchill . Western opera

10682-458: The truth. In Book II of The Republic , Plato describes Socrates ' dialogue with his pupils. Socrates warns we should not seriously regard poetry as being capable of attaining the truth and that we who listen to poetry should be on our guard against its seductions, since the poet has no place in our idea of God. Developing upon this in Book ;X, Plato told of Socrates's metaphor of

10791-407: The urge to create texts (art) that reflect and represent reality. Aristotle considered it important that there be a certain distance between the work of art on the one hand and life on the other; we draw knowledge and consolation from tragedies only because they do not happen to us. Without this distance, tragedy could not give rise to catharsis . However, it is equally important that the text causes

10900-419: The way it appears in the Bible. In addition to Plato and Auerbach, mimesis has been theorised by thinkers as diverse as Aristotle , Philip Sidney , Jean Baudrillard (via his concept of Simulacra and Simulation ) Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Adam Smith , Gabriel Tarde , Sigmund Freud , Walter Benjamin , Theodor Adorno , Paul Ricœur , Guy Debord ( via his conceptual polemical tract, The Society of

11009-571: The way that people from one culture adopt another's nature and culture (the process of mimesis) at the same time as distancing themselves from it (the process of alterity ). He describes how a legendary tribe, the "White Indians" (the Guna people of Panama and Colombia ), have adopted in various representations figures and images reminiscent of the white people they encountered in the past (without acknowledging doing so). Taussig, however, criticises anthropology for reducing yet another culture, that of

11118-510: The world) contain no hint of it (although a small number are composed in a form of dialogue ) and the rituals of the Vedic period do not appear to have developed into theatre. The Mahābhāṣya by Patañjali contains the earliest reference to what may have been the seeds of Sanskrit drama. This treatise on grammar from 140 BC provides a feasible date for the beginnings of theatre in India . The major source of evidence for Sanskrit theatre

11227-465: Was a reasonable substitute for this category." The Special Award process came to a climax in 2004 when, in the 50th anniversary year, the category was used to signal peaks of accomplishment by the National Theatre (an institution), Harold Pinter (a playwright) and Dame Judi Dench (a performer). The Patricia Rothermere Award, presented biennially from 1999 to 2005, was created to honour

11336-472: Was based on Euripides ' Hippolytus . Historians do not know who wrote the only extant example of the fabula praetexta (tragedies based on Roman subjects), Octavia , but in former times it was mistakenly attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a character in the tragedy. Beginning in the early Middle Ages , churches staged dramatised versions of biblical events, known as liturgical dramas , to enliven annual celebrations. The earliest example

11445-623: Was most appreciated for his tragedies and Naevius for his comedies; their successors tended to specialise in one or the other, which led to a separation of the subsequent development of each type of drama. By the beginning of the 2nd century BC, drama was firmly established in Rome and a guild of writers ( collegium poetarum ) had been formed. The Roman comedies that have survived are all fabula palliata (comedies based on Greek subjects) and come from two dramatists: Titus Maccius Plautus (Plautus) and Publius Terentius Afer (Terence). In re-working

11554-430: Was running out by the end of the 17th century, as public opinion turned to respectability and seriousness even faster than the playwrights did. At the much-anticipated all-star première in 1700 of The Way of the World , Congreve's first comedy for five years, the audience showed only moderate enthusiasm for that subtle and almost melancholy work. The comedy of sex and wit was about to be replaced by sentimental comedy and

11663-563: Was the Sanskrit drama . Between the 1st century AD and the 10th was a period of relative peace in the history of India during which hundreds of plays were written. With the Islamic conquests that began in the 10th and 11th centuries, theatre was discouraged or forbidden entirely. Later, in an attempt to re-assert indigenous values and ideas, village theatre was encouraged across the subcontinent, developing in various regional languages from

11772-552: Was the justification (appearing in the essay "Mimickry" in a war-time book published by Joseph Goebbels). The text suggests that a radical failure to understand the nature of mimesis as an innate human trait or a violent aversion to the same, tends to be a diagnostic symptom of the totalitarian or fascist character if it is not, in fact, the original unspoken occult impulse that animated the production of totalitarian or fascist movements to begin with. Calasso's argument here echoes, condenses and introduces new evidence to reinforce one of

11881-473: Was the standard term for dramas until William Shakespeare 's time—just as its creator was a play-maker rather than a dramatist and the building was a play-house rather than a theatre . The use of "drama" in a more narrow sense to designate a specific type of play dates from the modern era. "Drama" in this sense refers to a play that is neither a comedy nor a tragedy—for example, Zola's Thérèse Raquin (1873) or Chekhov's Ivanov (1887). It

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