Deck 8: Decentralization and Subsidization: New Directions

Question 1

_____ Off-Broadway theatres were founded as a way to produce plays that the typical Broadway audiences probably wouldn't come see

Answer 1

True

Question 2

_____ Happenings typically had all the following characteristics EXCEPT:

A) Use of multimedia that blurred the barriers between the arts
B) An emphasis on representation of a scripted text for an audience
C) Variable or simultaneous focus as much on the participants' awareness as on the artists' intentions
D) An emphasis on process rather than product

Answer 2

B

Question 3

_____Which theatre became the prototype for regional theaters in the U.S.?

A) The Goodman
B) Theatre '47
C) The Guthrie
D) Actors' Theatre of Louisville

Answer 3

B

Question 4

_____Which playwright's work instigated Parliament to abolish censorship laws that had been in place for over 200 years?

A) Harold Pinter
B) Tom Stoppard
C) John Osborne
D) Edward Bond

Question 5

????_____Which is NOT considered a regional theatre?

A) The Guthrie Theatre
B) Playwrights Horizons
C) The Goodman Theatre
D) Actors Theatre of Louisville

Question 6

_____Which Off-Off Broadway theatre offers plays free of charge in central park?

A) LaMama
B) The Circle in the Square
C) The New York Shakespeare Festival
D) The Manhattan Theatre Club

Question 7

_____Popular Broadway musicals in the 1970s and 80s were, for the most part, imports from England

Question 8

_____Which is a characteristic of Stephen Sondheim's musicals?

A) Upbeat optimism
B) A barely discernible story
C) Ironic and melancholic views of human behavior
D) Always a happy ending
True/False

Question 9

_____ No European countries consider funding for the arts a cultural responsibility

Question 10

_____Environmental theatre blurs the distinctions between acting space and audience space

Question 11

_____The Ford Foundation funded the 1963 opening of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis

Question 12

_____ What did Jerzy Grotowski want to achieve?

A) He wanted to break down the boundaries between the arts to achieve a more democratic theatre wherein dance, visual art, and theatre were equal partners
B) He wanted actors and audience to undergo an event wherein they might spiritually confront themselves
C) He wanted to aggressively confront and transform the audience politically into a revolutionary force for change that would move beyond the confines of the theatre

Question 13

_____Paradise Now was the first time nudity and obscenity appeared in a production on Broadway

Question 14

_____The term "decentralization" refers to the efforts to establish theatre centers in various parts of the country

Question 15

_____Josef Svoboda is among those typically credited with:

A) The use of multiple screens of varied sizes hung at varied distances from the audience on which different images were projected
B) The incorporation of film with live performers
C) Increasing the quick transformable quality of stage scenery
D) All of the above
E) None of the above

Question 16

????_____The Stratford Festival is most closely associated with the English National Theatre

Question 17

_____ England's Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre are both examples of very successful theatres that owe much to the federal subsidies they were granted

Question 18

_____ Playwright David Mamet writes about serious subjects in and outrageous manner to comically underscore the absurdity of modern life

Question 19

_____The Living Theatre:

A) Was primarily interested in the beauty of performance
B) Had their actors play a wide range of demanding roles to improve their talents
C) Raised the standards of voice training for actors in the U.S.
D) All of the above
E) None of the above

Question 20

_____Performance art formed, in part, due to impulses that had also inspired which of the following people?

A) Joseph Chaikin
B) Jerzy Grotowski
C) Alan Kaprow
D) Peter Brook

Question 21

Since the 1950s, considerable theatre criticism focused on what is being performed and by whom. In some cases this activity shifted the emphasis from performance as a product to performance as a shared process. Construct an essay that illuminates the political and social factors that participated in this dynamic, and the main forms that dynamic took in the 1960s and 70s.

Question 22

Have your students write an essay that describes the appeal of musical theatre:
"Why has the musical remained a very popular form over the past 75 years? In what ways has it changed and developed? Given the changes to the form over that time, what future developments might you predict for the form if you imagine it will continue to develop over the next 75 years?"