What is Drama?

Drama is a major in art that perform the story for the audience.  In this way, actors act the roles and communicate with dialogue. The story of this major is coming from many years ago, but the drama with this name and structure that we have these days is coming from Greece. As we have in the article by Jenny Cheever about history of Drama: “Drama as we know it got its start back in ancient Greece. Many of the plays written during the Classical period, from 525 BC to 385 BC, are still performed today. Antigone, Oedipus Rex and Medea are among the plays written during this time. Not only are these plays still popular as theatrical productions, they also greatly influenced playwrights throughout history”[6].

The most important element that shows what Drama is is that it is live. Aristotle was the first person that talked about these essential elements, more than two thousand years ago. Here is the Aristotle's Six Elements of Drama:

• Plot: This is what happens in the play. Plot refers to the action; the basic storyline of the play.
• Theme: While plot refers to the action of the play, theme refers to the meaning of the play. Theme is the main idea or lesson to be learned from the play. In some cases, the theme of a play is obvious; other times it is quite subtle.
• Characters:  Characters are the people (sometimes animals or ideas) portrayed by the actors in the play. It is the characters who move the action, or plot, of the play forward.
• Dialogue: This refers to the words written by the playwright and spoken by the characters in the play. The dialogue helps move the action of the play along.
• Music/Rhythm: While music is often featured in drama, in this case Aristotle was referring to the rhythm of the actors' voices as they speak.  
• Spectacle: This refers to the visual elements of a play: sets, costumes, special effects, etc. Spectacle is everything that the audience sees as they watch the play.

After all this time, when we want to talk about what is the best Drama, we still fact from the Aristotle's list [7].