If reader or audience members have a knowledge of dramatic style, this will help them to differentiate between different plays which have the same basic form. ‘Style’ is the word that is used to describe a drama that is created from a distinctive mode of expression or method of presentation. For example, a particular style may come from qualities pertaining to a specific period of time (eg the Nineteenth Century, a particular country (eg America), an ideological movement (eg Feminism), or a certain author (eg Oscar Wilde).
The style of Western theatre has been influenced throughout its history by certain cultural pressures. That is, social pressures including religion, philosophy, and socio-economic constraints have helped to create specific theatrical constructs. If a reader can identify some of these specific traits, she or he will be able to make distinctions between different plays. For example, it is possible to discuss the characteristics of an eighteenth-century theatrical style. This discussion could be further refined by differentiating between French and English plays of the period or by distinguishing the dramatic traits of romantic plays, from the expressionist or the absurd plays.
Dramatic Style of a given period or an ideological movement is generated by a number of different influences. Firstly, a reader can identify a particular style based on information that is presented in a play. A reader can assume that a play captures some of the essence of truth about a particular period. That is to say that writers from different periods or with different ideologies construct the dramatic world in different ways. What is ‘truthful’ about the world to one generation may not be so for successive generations. Often through their plays, writers attempt to answer specific existential questions such as ‘What is truth?’, or ‘How do we construct reality?’. The answers to these types of questions differ depending on scientific, religious, and cultural beliefs of the periods in which they are being asked (eg there was a time when it was truthful to state that the world was flat).
Despite these ideological differences all playwrights have the same means of expression available to them. Writers and performers rely on the codes of communication to reveal meaning. Sound and visual images are the two main communication modes used in the theatre. It is the way that playwrights and performers manipulate these codes that generate different plays and different types of performances. Dramatic Style results from the way in which a play is presented in the theatre. It is the way that a play is directed and acted, as well as the types of scenery, costumes, and lighting that are used, which helps to influence the style of the production.