To sum up, the following are the major elements of theater:

Theater and Theatre—How Is It Spelled? Whether you use the spelling theatre or theater will depend on where you hail from. In American English, the spelling is theater; in Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world, theatre is used.

Although a theater was built in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1716, and the original Dock Street Theatre opened in Charleston, South Carolina in 1736, the birth of professional theater in America may have begun when Lewis Hallam arrived with his theatrical company in Williamsburg in 1752.

• Performers.
• Audience.
• Director.
• Theater Space.
• Design Aspects (scenery, costume, lighting, and sound)
• Text (which includes focus, purpose, point of view,

‘Modern American Drama’ is a title used to define some of America’s most influential dramatic work throughout the 20th Century. However early Modern American Playwrights drew their influences from European constructs, such as those of Chekov; intent on representing life within drama in a more realistic style.

Plot. As discussed in the Creative Nonfiction and Fiction chapters, plot is the most important element in a narrative. It is the events in the play and the order in which the events are told.

Let’s take a closer look at the four elements required to create theatre: script, process, product, and audience.

The most common areas of study are: acting, directing, drama and theatre for youth, playwriting, theatre technology, theatrical design, and theatre management.

Here are five elements essential to meaningful play that create those rich memories we treasure:

• Children make their own decisions.
• Children are intrinsically motivated.
• Children become immersed in the moment.
• Play is spontaneous, not scripted.
• Play is enjoyable.

The five elements of drama are the thought, theme, and ideas; action and plot; characters; language; and music.

There are six main elements of drama which serve as the basis of producing a successful play. These essential elements of drama include the plot of the story, the theme, the genre in which the story belongs, the characters, the setting, and the audience.

Theme is the message the play wants to convey. Some people describe it as a moral or lesson, but it is not always directly a lesson. A play will build theme largely through dialogue. Characters can say things directly related to the theme, as the events happen around them.

An act is a part of a play defined by elements such as rising action, climax, and resolution. To be more specific, the elements that create the plot of a play and divide it into acts include the exposition, which gives information, setting up the rest of the story.

As verbs the difference between act and play is that act is {{context|intransitive|lang=en}} to do something while play is {{context|intransitive|lang=en}} to act in a manner such that one has fun; to engage in activities expressly for the purpose of recreation.

Plays can be as short as one act or can have five or more acts. Each act is broken into scenes, and these scenes are little parts of the big story that’s being told. Scenes change when the set of characters on stage change or their location changes.

Explanation: A one act play is a play where all the action happens in one act with no breaks, that is, the scene is continuous and the setting most likely will not change. A drama, on the other hand, is only within the parameters of genre, where by definition the play is dramatic.