What Is Theatre?
What we call theatre can take many forms — everything from a Shakespearean drama staged before an audience of thousands to a group improvisation in an elementary school classroom. All forms of theatre, however, include three essential elements: an actor, a story with a conflict, and an audience.

Theatre Terms

• Acting: the process of creating roles and characters in dramatic context
• Audience: one or more persons who observe actors in a scene or play
• Conflict: when the desires of two or more characters are opposed to each other
• Costume: an actor’s stage clothing
• Dialogue: words spoken by the characters in a play to communicate their thoughts, feelings, and actions
• Elements of drama: plot, character, theme, dialogue, music, and spectacle, according to Aristotle
• Plot: the structure of the action of a play
• Script: the written dialogue, description, and directions provided by the playwright
• Setting: the time and place in which the dramatic action occurs
• Theatre: the imitation or representation of life, performed for other people; the performance of dramatic literature

What Is Music?
Music is organized sound created to communicate an idea, feeling, or process.

Music Terms

• Articulation: how individual notes are attacked
• Design: the arrangement of musical parts; the form of the music
• Duration: music in time; the length of the sounds
• Dynamics: loudness and softness in music
• Expressive qualities: variables within performance parameters
• Melody: a planned succession of pitches; the tune
• Music: organized sound
• Pitch: the high and low qualities of music
• Rhythm: the patterns of sounds in relation to the steady beat
• Steady beat: the regular pulse of the music
• Tempo: the speed of the music
• Timbre: tone color; the distinctive quality of a given instrument, voice, or sound source
• Tonality: the combination of pitches as they function together

What Is Dance?
All dance — whether it is about a story, a culture, a specific style, a feeling, or movement for movement’s sake — involves a body in motion. All styles of dance communicate using the basic elements of time, space, and shape.

Dance Terms

• Chant: singing or speaking that repeats itself
• Choreographer: person who creates the dance
• Choreography: the dance movements
• Cue: a signal
• Freeze: stopping all movement
• Shape: using the body to create lines
• Space: the locations occupied by the body; for example, low, middle, and high levels or negative and positive space
• Time: the cadence or meter that determines the motion, which can be slow, medium, or fast
• Transition: the passage among ideas, places, thoughts, and stages

What Is Visual Art?
Definitions of visual art vary depending on cultural context and personal viewpoints. As students develop a personal understanding of art, it is important that they support their opinions with evidence.

The fourth lesson in Program 1 models an approach to art called aesthetics. As the Learner Teams and students created definitions of art, they were, in essence, engaging in philosophical inquiry.

Visual Art Terms

• Art: the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty
• Composition: design manipulation — balance, repetition, movement, unity, and center of interest
• Craftsmanship: quality of design and technique
• Elements of art: components artists often manipulate — line, color, shape/form, value, texture, and space
• Intent: the mood, message, or meaning desired by the artist
• Performance art: a form of theatrical art in which thematically related works in a variety of media are presented simultaneously or successively to an audience
• Technique: materials and working methods used by artists