Act - action, in drama and stage art, part of the work [1] ( dramas , plays , operas , ballet , pantomime , etc.); a completed piece in the development of the overall course of the play (act from Lat. actum deed done, perfect), separated from the rest of the pieces by a break, and the break between acts can be long when actions are separated by so-called. intermissions , or to be very brief, conditionally marked by the fall of the curtain with immediate then resumption of the performance.
| Act | |
|---|---|
| Terminology in the theater | |
| Origin | fr acte |
| Verbatim | act |
Theoretically, based on the analysis of the construction of the tragedy in its classical examples, it can be assumed that the tradition of dividing into acts has as its source those general rules that Aristotle had outlined, asserting the construction of the tragedy on three main points: exposition - plot, peripeteia - turning to the best or the worst, and the outcome is a disaster. These three points make up three acts, but when expanding, between these parts further acts are introduced in later plays, usually an odd number, usually five. In Indian dramas, the number of acts is much larger, and in Chinese it reaches 21.
Gustav Freytag (“ Technique of Drama ”) makes an amendment to the Aristotelian scheme, counting in the drama of 8 most significant moments of dramatic action:
- intro, which may take the form of a prologue;
- the moment of excitement;
- ascent;
- highest point of ascent;
- tragic moment;
- descent;
- the moment of the last voltage and finally
- catastrophe.
But M. Carriere, in his famous work “Dramatic Poetry” (Russian transl. V. Ya. Yakovlev, Peterburg., 1898), these 8 moments, naturally causing the need for 8 acts or pictures, reduces to four: 1) the introduction ( exposure ); 2) raising the action; 3) fracture ( peripetia ) and 4) descent. In essence, to build a drama only three acts are needed, corresponding to the beginning, middle and end of the action. But the middle, usually richer in content, in turn is revealed in three acts, so that in the second A. drama the beginning of development is placed, in the third - the highest moment of the conflict, in the fourth - the action goes to the end, the fifth brings the end. But the division of plays into A. is in general a dramaturgic device of relatively late origin. The ancient tragedians with their ideal form design still did not divide their tragedies into acts - this was done for them by their commentators and translators. They do not know the division into A. and the old Spanish masters.
In general, it should be noted that both the division into acts, and the determination of their number is a convention. It is quite obvious, for example, that the number of acts and paintings in Shakespeare's plays was not at all determined by the playwright who wrote under the name of Shakespeare , but for purely technical reasons, and is explained by the design of the scene of the era of the Elisabethan Theater in England . Generally, the purely technical side: this or that stage equipment, the availability of editing tools, and in particular, the latest systems of revolving scenes - this is what dramatists take into account in determining the number of A. in their plays. In this regard, it is significant that Leo Tolstoy , who gave the traditional number of acts in The Power of Darkness and in the Fruits of Enlightenment , smashed the Living Corpse into a huge number of pictures, explaining that he wrote a play for the theater with the latest design scenes. The most important technical factor determining both the duration of a separate act and the length of the pause in the theater of the 18th and 19th centuries was the lighting of the stage and the orchestra pit. The burning time of a standard theatrical candle determined the duration of the act. The time it takes to install new candles limited the pause time.
Modern playwrights share their plays almost arbitrarily. In any case, studying the technique of Ibsen , Hauptmann , Suderman , Shaw , it is impossible to establish any rules regarding the distribution of acts and their numbers. The usual tradition requires for tragedy 5, for drama 4 and for comedy (especially for farce ) 3 acts. Of the Russian playwrights, almost one Gogol in The Inspector-General and, partly, in The Marriage , in the distribution of his perfectly-constructed comedies to acts, approached that pattern of 5 actions that the drama theorists speak of.
Notes
- ↑ Great Russian Encyclopedia: 30 tons. / Chairman of the Scientific-Ed. Council Yu. S. Osipov. Ed. Ed. S. L. Kravets. T. 1. A - Questioning. - M .: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 2005. - 766 pp .: ill .: maps.
Links
- Act // Encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : in 86 tons (82 tons and 4 extra.). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- Act // Literary encyclopedia : 11 t.: V. 1 / Otv. ed. Fritsche V.M . ; Ed. Secretary Beskin O. M. - M .: Publishing House Com. Acad., 1930. - Stb. 656-657. - 768 stb. : il.