| absurd | | Scene descriptions, instructions |
| act | | A "frozen moment" |
| ad-lib | | A distinctive class or category of a play |
| audition | | To perform in a play |
| black-box theatre | | Highly comic, lighthearted, gleefully contrived drama, usually involving stock situations |
| blocking | | Or "props"; the furniture and hand held objects used in play productions |
| callback | | That which can be construed to have determined a person's behavior |
| climax | | The deeper meanings of a character's spoken lines |
| commedia dell' arte | | A long unbroken speech in a play |
| cue | | Dramatic material that makes fun of a genre |
| denouement | | Audience members' identification with dramatic characters |
| dialogue | | Emphasizes the symbolic nature of the presentation and abstract possibilities |
| diction | | A covering of the face |
| dimmer | | The speeches- delivered to each other- of the characters in a play |
| downstage | | A line improvised by an actor during a performance |
| empathy | | The general principle that the stage should portray, in a reasonable facsimile |
| environmental theatre | | The part of the stage closest to the audience |
| farce | | The specific staging of a play's movements |
| genre | | The point of highest tension in a play |
| improvisation | | A play that ridicules social follies |
| mask | | An extreme form of realism which advanced the notion that the natural and social environment controlled human behavior |
| monologue | | The final scene or scenes in a play |
| motivation | | The principal character |
| naturalism | | A form of largely improvised masked street theatre |
| objective | | Dialogue invented by the actor, often during the performance itself |
| parody | | The basic "goal" of a character |
| plot | | The electrical device that regulates the current passing through the bulb |
| properties | | The events of a play |
| protagonist | | Actor's need for articulate speech and clear pronunciation |
| realism | | The notion that the world is meaningless |
| satire | | The process whereby an actor seeks a role by presenting to a director |
| scenography | | After the initial audition the director or casting director will "call back" for additional sometimes many readings |
| stage directions | | A rectangular room with no fixed seating or stage area |
| symbolism | | Scene design |
| tableau | | The last word of one speech that then becomes the "cue" for the following speech |
| upstage | | Plays produced not on a conventional stage but in an area where the actors and the audience are intermixed in the same "environment" |
| subtext | | A "frozen moment" |
