Theories of Acting and Directing

Born "of a distinguished Jewish family in Mantua [Italy], [he was] an actor manager in the second half of the sixteenth-century. He directed a company which furnished the mobility of Mantua with most of its entertainment, he became the official author and theatrical manager of the Academy of the Invaghiti, and he proposed the establishment of a permanent public theatre.

• George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen

• Leoni di Somi

• Diderot

• Quintilian

[This] "royal scene designer . . . established a theatrical troupe which was to have world-wide influence . . . [In the late nineteenth-century, he] created productions marked by excellent ensemble playing, by historical accuracy in costuming, and by an artistic and vital interrelationship between the movements of the actor and the decor"

• George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen

• Leoni di Somi

• Diderot

• Aristotle

"[His] ideas on acting, formulated in his celebrated brochure . . . The Paradox of Acting, were part of his broader thinking on the theatre. In a dogmatic manner, he insisted that the actor must be devoid of any sensibility."

• George II, Duke of Saxe Meiningen

• Leoni Di Somi

• Aristotle

• Diderot

"[H]e was an actor at the beginning of his career but also later when he had already written some great plays . . . He was with the Chamberlain's Company, headed by Richard Burbage, when it was founded in 1594"

• Denis Diderot

• William Shakespeare

• Leone di Somi

• Quintillian

"[O]ur most important single source of information on the Greek drama of the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. Student of Plato . . . he left . . . writings on politics, logic, and metaphysics, as well as studies of poetry and rhetoric."

• Willliam Shakespeare

• Aristotle

• Quintillian

• Diderot

"For twenty years he headed the foremost school of oratory in Rome, and the Emperor Vespasian created a chair of oratory for him. In 88 A.D. [he] retired from active teaching . . .  to write his great work, the Institutio Oratoria." 

• Aristotle

• Leone di Somi

• Quintillian

• William Shakespeare

"[T]he ______ should even, as much as possible, be an actor; for by natural sympathy, they are most persuasive and affecting who are under the influence of actual passion." 

Who did Aristotle say should, ideally, be an actor?

• director

• poet

• nobleman

• athlete

What is the title of Aristotle's work in which "we learn the origin of drama in Greece, the number of players used in performances and, indirectly, . . . some of the qualities attributed to actors and acting."

• Institutes of Oratory

• Dialogues on Acting

• Poetics

• The Paradox of Acting

"This is referred to by the immortal Plato in his dialogue on poetic fury. He makes Ion say, 'Every time I recite a mournful poem my eyes fill with tears; every time I come on some terrible passages, my hair raises on my head."

The poetic fury referred to here most relates to the concept of:

• chironomia

• vitalism

• histrionics

• technique

"Delivery is by most writers called action; but it appears to derive one name from the voice, and the other from the gesture; for Cicero calls action sometimes the language, as it were, and sometimes the eloquence of the body."

Action defined as word and gesture, here, is attributed to:

• Quintillian

• Diderot

• Shakespeare

• Aristotle