Theatre Brief 12th Edition By Robert Cohen – Test Bank

Chapter 11 The Audience

1) A play’s final repository is
A) the stage, in a living performance.
B) the promptbook, containing record of the script’s words and play’s movements.
C) the minds and memories of its audiences.
D) the critical record of the play’s performance in newspapers, blogs, and scholarly journals.

Answer: C
Learning Objective: Recognize how audience members engage in dramatic analysis.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

2) The public form of play analysis following a production is called
A) dramatic criticism.
B) literary criticism.
C) semiotic criticism.
D) post-structural criticism.

Answer: A
Learning Objective: Recognize the range of critical perspectives that can be brought to bear on the theatre.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

3) Dramatic criticism usually appears in all the following forms EXCEPT
A) production reviews in newspapers or periodicals.
B) reactions to the play posted on blogs and online magazines.
C) director’s notes in a program.
D) scholarly articles or books on dramatic literature.

Answer: C
Learning Objective: Recognize the range of critical perspectives that can be brought to bear on the theatre.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

4) Examples of theatres that have been created or sustained by governments or ruling elites include all of the following EXCEPT the
A) ancient Greek.
B) medieval liturgical and Corpus Christi drama.
C) theatre of the absurd and antirealism theatre.
D) Royal era.

Answer: C
Learning Objective: Recognize the way that theatre engages with social issues.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

5) Why is the theatre in a unique position to force and focus public confrontation about social issues?
A) Playwrights’ politics have usually been the main reason they write plays in the first place.
B) The theatre has traditionally served as the best medium to transmit a direct statement on an issue, thus convincing the audience of a specific point of view in an aggressive manner.
C) Most productions do not act as propaganda but present the issues in all their complexity as food for thought and as such focus public debate, stimulate dialogue, and turn public attention and compassion to important issues.
D) The theatre has never been historically connected with government institutions and therefore has nothing to do with social issues or government decisions.

Answer: C
Learning Objective: Recognize the way that theatre engages with social issues.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

6) A play’s ability to connect with audience members on a personal level is due to the fact that the best plays
A) focus on the theatrical personnel who put on the play itself.
B) have no connection at all with individual needs or desires.
C) link up with our deepest musings and help us to put our unconnected ideas into some sort of order or philosophy.
D) do not involve individual struggles but reflect solely on group ponderings.

Answer: C
Learning Objective: Recognize that great plays transcend social and political issues and connect to personal qualities.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

7) An audience member’s aesthetic sensibility and response are
A) consistent with all those individuals within the same national culture.
B) consistent with all those individuals with the same ethnic and economic background.
C) generally determined by educational background.
D) a composite of many individual reactions and therefore entirely subjective.

Answer: D
Learning Objective: Recognize that theatre is judged as an art piece.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

8) Plays that refer to theatrical matter not simply as a vehicle but as a theme are called
A) metadrama or metatheatre.
B) hyperdrama or hypertheatre.
C) hypodrama or hypotheatre.
D) sur-drama or sur-theatre.

Answer: A
Learning Objective: Recognize that plays can be judged by their relationship to the history and the institution of theatre.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

9) Which of the following is NOT an example of a play that makes the theatre a matter in the play itself?
A) Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
B) Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author
C) Shakespeare’s Hamlet
D) Sophocles’ Oedipus The King

Answer: D
Learning Objective: Recognize that plays can be judged by their relationship to the history and the institution of theatre.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation

10) What word fits the definition of “that which holds the attention”?
A) suspense
B) entertainment
C) tension
D) anxiety

Answer: B
Learning Objective: Recognize the importance of entertainment to the theatre.
Bloom’s: Understand
Accessibility: Keyboard Navigation