A theatrical performance has a wide range of emotions and feelings intended to create a cathartic effect on the audience. Unlike movies, theatre performances are delivered in a single take to a live audience. As a result, a high level of experience is required to portray the emotional messages that a director desires. However, to keep in mind, theatre performances are not limited to one type. It is more likely to involve multiple genres in a single play or a single play of a different genre. Some of the genres you can expect to see in a theatre are listed below if you wish to learn more about them:
1.Comedy
Comedy is one of the oldest and most popular theatrical genres. The definition of comedy in the modern day is well established in the theatre world. The original comedies were mostly sarcastic, mocking persons in authority for their arrogance and folly. Aristophanes is regarded as the first comic playwright, following in the footsteps of Menander, Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, and others.
2.Tragedy
In a theatrical performance, tragedy is all about violence and misery. Following humour, the tragedy genre most impressed the audience, giving them a cathartic sense to feel what the characters on stage were feeling. Tragedy addresses the major issues of romance, grief, vanity, abuse of authority, and tense interactions involving men and gods. In most tragedies, the main character makes a severe offence without recognising how silly and egotistical he has been. There is always a flaw in the protagonist, which he gradually learns as things begin to fall apart around him.
3.Satyr plays
A satyr play is typically an Attic theatre production that combines humour and tragedy. These are all short pieces presented between tragic scenes that made a fool of the tragedy’s actors’ situation. Satyrs were fabled half-human, half-goat beings, and players in these plays dressed with huge phallic symbols for comedy purposes. This subgenre is also referred to as tragic-comedy or comic drama.
4.Exaggerated wit
This genre is very similar to comedy, except that overstated jokes are made throughout the play. The plot may have a meaningful message to express to the audience, but it will feel highly nonsensical. The scenes will be dispersed throughout the place, leaving the audience in the dark about what is going on. In these types of plays, the humour is typically crude and vulgar, and nothing happens with any certainty.
5.Opera
Opera is another genre that is still widely performed today. Operas are extremely different from musicals in that the actors sing the lines or conversations rather than speaking them. An opera act’s principal themes include soliloquies, tragedy, comedy, or melodramatic aspects. Aside from songs and conversations, these may also include dance routines primarily dependent on vocal performances.
6.Musical
These are distinct from opera in that talks in musicals are mixed with music and acts rather than being transformed into music. Characters commonly sing to communicate their feelings in musicals, and songs are used to shift the plot or make the storyline more intense. If you go to a musical performance, you will most likely observe characters dancing and singing throughout the play.