THEORIES OF DRAMA

1. Aristotle offered drama as a general term to describe forms of poetry that were ‘acted’, he identified different types of composition within this category, including comedy and tragedy. He regarded comedy as a form of drama because it represented acts that made audiences laugh and he considered tragedy a form of drama because it represented acts that made audiences feel pity or fear.

2. O’Neill said drama is a mode of learning.

3. Moreno believed that drama enabled spontaneous activity, and in this turn developed the creativity of the self.

4. Harriet Finlay‐Johnson (1871 — 1956) declare that drama arouses a keen desire to know.

5. Bolton argues that drama is not about self-expression, he further states that drama is a social event and is always concerned with something outside oneself.

6. According to Kenneth Tynan, good drama is made up the thoughts, the words, and the gestures that are wrung from human beings on their way to, or in, or emerging from a state of desperation.

7. Coughlan said drama being a scientific mode of enquiry, each session being a laboratory for living.

8. Of his theatrical structure, Brecht writes “The individual episodes have to be knotted together in such a way that the knots are easily noticed. The episodes must not succeed each other indistinguishably bur must give us a chance to interpose our judgment.”

9. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary/Thesaurus (1996), drama is a composition in verse or prose intended to portray life or character or to tell a story usually involving conflicts and emotions through action and dialogue and typically designed for theatrical performance.

10. Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus believed that drama shows how false events can become reality in a person's mind and how subjects can confuse or combine dreaming and waking events.