Learn English Vocabulary: Going to the theatre

Hello, I'm Gill at www.engvid.com and today's lesson is on the subject of going to the theatre,

okay?

So, this links a little bit with another lesson we had with meeting up with a friend, one

of the options was to go to the theatre, while another is to go to an art gallery, so this

one is if you have arranged with your friend to go to the theatre, this is what to expect

when you get there.

And also, in the second part of the lesson, we'll be looking at ways of talking about

the play that you're watching, maybe either in the interval or at the end of the play,

you would want to talk to your friend about what you've been watching, okay.

So, first of all, going to the theatre, you've probably been to the theatre in your own country,

so you know what's involved.

But this is specifically for a UK type of theatre, okay.

So, you've probably arranged where to meet already, either outside the theatre or inside,

in the foyer, which is just inside the entrance, the entrance hall of the theatre, the foyer,

which is a French word, in the bar, or in the café, or in the shop.

Not all theatres have all of these things in them, it depends.

The bigger theatres will have all of those things.

Smaller theatres will probably not have all of those.

They may not have a shop.

They may not have a bar.

Some theatres are actually above a pub, the public house in the UK, they're very small

theatres, so there is a pub, somewhere to drink, particularly the downstairs part of

the building before you go up or behind to the back of the building to the theatre section,

so we'll talk about that a little bit more later on.

So, you arrange where to meet, so these are the names for different places to meet in

or around the theatre.

And then when you go in, you may have to, if you don't already have your tickets, you

need to go to the box office.

This is the place where you get your tickets.

You may have already paid for them in advance or you may want to ask the person in the box

office, "Do you have any seats for today's performance?" and they might show you a chart,

the seating plan, where would you want to sit?

Okay, so the box office is where you go for your tickets, right.

And then once you've got your tickets, you may also want to buy a program, which is a

little booklet containing a lot of information about the show that you're there to see.

So, the program will list the names of the people performing in the show, the people

who have been involved in the technical side, the lighting, the sound effects, the costumes,

creating the scenery on the stage, all of the sort of artistic side that goes into a

production.

So, the program will give a sort of - it's a kind of way of giving credit, you get the

credits in the program for everybody, because it's a big sort of team effort putting on

a play, lots of people are involved.

So, all the credits for everybody who has worked on that production will go into the

program.

And there will be a little bit about the story of - if it's a play or a musical or whatever

it is, there will be a bit of information about the show itself, what it's about, so

it's a useful thing to look at before you go in to see the show.

Okay?

So, then you're inside the theatre building, and then when it gets close to the time that

the show is due to start, you will probably hear an announcement over a loudspeaker, usually.

You will hear something like "Ladies and Gentlemen, the show will begin in five minutes.", something

like that.

"Please take your seats.", meaning please go in and sit down, it doesn't mean take,

people joke about this.

When you take your seat, it means you sit down in your seat, it doesn't mean you pick

the seat up and take it somewhere.

So, it's a little bit ambiguous, but "Please take your seats" means go in, sit down, we

need you in there ready for the show to start.

So, when you hear that, you go to the entrance, into what's called the auditorium, the sort

of central part of the theatre where everybody sits, where the audience - the audience sits,

and they're looking up at the stage where the performers are, so you have to go in.

So, at the entrance, you have to usually show your ticket to somebody who is checking to

make sure that people don't go in who have not bought a ticket.

That person is called an usher.

It's a funny old fashioned word, but they will check your ticket and they might say

- they might give you some directions like "Turn left, just go up the steps and your

seat is just over on the right", something like that, so you go in, into the auditorium.

If - on your ticket, you may have some numbers and letters that tell you where your seat

is, but there are some smaller theatres called "fringe theatre".

They're not big theatres in, say, London, West End, the London West End, the big theatres

in Central London.

A fringe theatre, as I said earlier, it's often a little theatre above a pub or at the

back of a pub building.

So, those are quite small, often there is only seating for maybe 40 or 50 people, 60,

70 at the most.

So, with a fringe theatre, often there are no seat numbers.

There's nothing on your ticket to say where you should sit.

You just go in and look around and decide where you want to sit.

So, if you're one of the last people in, you just have to sit wherever there's a space.

If you go in early, you can probably find a really nice seat in the front row or something,

okay?

So, a larger theatre - on your ticket, you will usually have the row number and the seat

number.

So, in an auditorium, you've got all the rows of seats like that, and say that's the stage

there, and then you've got rows and they're often "A, B, C, D, E", etc., so the rows are

in letters and then within each row you have seat numbers.

So, that would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.

So, if you have D3 on your ticket, you want Row D, Seat 3.

If you have G38 on your ticket, you need Row G, and it must be a very long row to have

at least 38 seats in it, go along, you often have to go past people, say "Excuse me, Excuse

me, Sorry, Excuse me" to get past people who are already sitting there.

So, find your seat, sit down, get comfortable, get ready for the show to begin, okay.

One very important thing is to switch off your mobile phone, okay?

If mobile phones ring during a performance, it's one of the worst things that can happen

in the theatre world.

It's very distracting for the performers and it's very distracting for other members of

the audience.

People get very angry if mobile phones start ringing.

So, don't disrupt the show.

Don't spoil the show for yourself and for other people.

Turn off your mobile phone.

And also, you know, you're there to see a show.

You've paid money to see it.

You need to concentrate on the show.

If you had your mobile phone on and you were checking your text messages at the same time,

it's not like watching television where maybe you've got your mobile phone on and you're

also watching television, it's not like that.

You really need to concentrate 100% on the play or the show that you're seeing.

So, sometimes people have said they saw someone in the audience with the light from their

mobile phone shining.

They could see somebody was actually on their phone during a performance, so I know sometimes

it's - there's an emergency or something, but really, you should turn your mobile phone

off, okay, for various reasons.

Right, and then you can really sit back and relax and enjoy what you're watching.

So, and then quite often, any production, any performance will have an interval, usually

there's a first half and a second half with an interval in between.

So, you have a choice, quite often, whether to just stay if it's a 20-minute interval

and, if you're like me, you'll think "Oh, I just want to sit here and read the program

or something.

I don't want to get up out of my seat and walk out with all these other people and then

stand around not knowing what to do for 20 minutes.

I just want to stay in my seat and just read the program or chat to my friend or whatever.",

but you do have the option of going out in the interval.

Some people order drinks for the interval.

They may have ordered drinks in advance and paid given a name and they go out and they

find that their drinks have been set out for them with their name to save time, or people

just go out and get some drinks at the bar.

Sometimes, though, you're not allowed to stay in your seat in the interval.

Sometimes, because the production people want to change what's happening on the stage, if

there's no curtain to close off the stage, if it's an open stage, they may want to change

the set or do something and they don't want people sitting there watching them while they

do that, so they might say "Ladies and Gentlemen, please leave the auditorium during the interval.",

so it depends on the production, really.

Okay, so that's the first half of our lesson.

I hope that's been useful with some vocabulary and the kind of things to expect in a UK theatre,

so we'll now move on to the second part of the lesson and have a look at a little bit

more to do with talking about the theatre with the friend that you're with.

Okay, so you've seen the play, the show, or you've seen half of it and you're in the interval

and you're with your friend.

So, the most logical thing to do is to talk about what you've just seen.

So, what will you talk about?

How do you talk about a play that you're in the middle of watching or that you've just

seen?

What kind of things can you say?

So, I think it helps to look at different aspects of the play.

All the different parts that go into it.

So, the people performing, things connected with the story, who wrote it, the visual aspect

of what it looks like onstage, so let's just go through those and see what kinds of things

you can talk about.

So, one of the obvious things when you go to a play is you're watching actors and actresses

and you may be thinking "Oh, they're so good, the way they're performing, they're so good

at what they're doing.", hopefully.

So, the acting, but maybe they're so good that you forget that they're acting.

You start to think these are real people, maybe.

So, actors, that's the word for a male actor, but nowadays, female actresses are also called

"actors" nowadays for reasons of equality.

Women are often called "actors" as well, but the word "actress" is still used as well,

so actors, actresses, the acting, the acting in general.

So, you could say to your friend, "Oh, isn't the acting good?"

Isn't the acting good?

Meaning all of the actors, aren't they good?

Okay.

You may think, if you're at one of the big theatres where they have very famous people

performing there sometimes, you may think you've seen one of those actors before, perhaps

on television or in a film, so then you might have a look at the program to see which - what's

the name of the actor playing that part?

And then in the program also, you get little biographical notes for each performer to say

where they have appeared before, other plays they've been in, films they've been in, television

programs they've been in, so you can read a little bit about each actor in the program

and then that might help to remind you of a TV program perhaps, where you saw that person

before.

They may have been in a completely different kind of role, the character, the role, it's

called the role or the part that they're playing, actors sometimes play quite different personalities

in the different roles that they do.

So, you could find out from the program if you think you've seen someone before, okay?

So that's one thing to talk about with your friend.

And then, the production itself, the actors are playing characters, so they're fictional,

often fictional characters, so each character has a different personality, they're all behaving

in different ways.

There will be relationships between the different characters onstage.

So, you might want to talk about a particular character, what you think of them, if they're

a nice person or not a nice person, whether you like them or dislike them.

Of course, if in a play, if all the characters were nice people, it would probably be very

- a very boring play because the thing about plays is that there has to be some kind of

conflict, a problem to be resolved.

So, if all the characters are nice to each other all the way through the play, there

won't be very much drama in it.

So, you have to have some bad characters or badly behaved characters in a play, otherwise

there's nothing - nothing happening, okay.

So, the characters and how they behave is another subject you can talk about.

And then, what links in with that is the situation that the characters are in, the story that

you're seeing.

The plot, the word "plot" is to do with the sort of consequences - if somebody does something,

then that makes something else happen, and then that makes something else happen, the

plot is the sort of forward movement of the story, okay.

So, you can talk about that, one character does something, and it sets off something

else happening.

It may cause an accident, for example, so if a character leaves a child's toy on the

floor and they don't tidy it up and the child's toy is perhaps something with wheels on it,

a little toy train, and then another character comes along and they don't see it but they

step on it and they fall over and hit their head and hurt themselves, that's part of the

plot.

It's a consequence of somebody doing something.

Okay, so you could talk about whether it seems realistic, true to life, or exaggerated, because

in Drama, things can be exaggerated just to make it more exciting.

It could be surreal, even, if it doesn't really feel real, it just feels - it seems very strange,

strange things happen, that would be surreal.

Not real, but surreal.

Very, very odd things happening, okay.

And then there's the question of who actually wrote the play or the show, whatever it is.

Whether it's written by a man or a woman, what their nationality is, whether it's a

translation that you're watching, maybe with a Russian play like by Chekhov, in the UK,

that would be performed in an English translation, and there are lots of different translations

of the same plays by different translators in different periods in history, so you could

have a modern translation of Chekhov, or you could have a much older translation of Chekhov,

so all sorts of things like that to talk about.

Okay.

And maybe you can also read in the program about the person who wrote the play, find

out a bit more about them from there, okay.

And then there's the visual aspect of the set, what you can see on the stage, the scenery,

furniture, things like that.

What does it look like?

Is it a room in somebody's house, or is it in the open air in a field in the countryside,

near a farm?

It could be anything.

So, you talk about that and whether you think it's been well designed or not.

Okay.

Costumes and hairstyles, there's somebody in the production team responsible for these

things, so you can talk about the - what people are wearing, the actors are wearing, their

hairstyle, whether they're modern or historical, is it present day or is it a long time back

in history when people wore different styles of clothes?

Then there are things like the music, the sound effects, which add to the atmosphere

of the play.

And the lighting, just lighting, you know, the different colors, different effects, if

it's a scene, for example, in the countryside on a summer's day, the lighting has to try

to suggest sunshine, so that's something that has to be achieved inside an enclosed building

to create a sense of sunshine in the open air.

So, there is a skill to the lighting.

So, those are some specific things you can talk about with your friend either during

the interval or after the play.

And then, okay, so say you've watched the whole play and it's come to an end and then

it's time to go home, so you might want to say just a few general things afterwards to

your friend.

Maybe "Thanks for coming.", "It was interesting.", or if you really liked it, "Oh, it was amazing.",

or "It was fascinating.", there are quite strong positive things to say.

If you think it was a bit strange, you could say "Oh, it was unusual.

It was an unusual play, but interesting."

You don't want to sound too negative about it, even if you really didn't like it, you

don't want your friend to think that, you know, you've both wasted your time bothering

to go, so you could say "Oh, it was unusual, wasn't it?

I haven't seen a play like that before."

"It was strange.", or if it was a comedy, "It was funny.", or "It was sad.", it could

be both funny and sad in different places, "It was dramatic.", of course, you expect

any play to be dramatic, the word "drama" means a play, but "dramatic", it might be

more than just normally dramatic.

Very exciting, for example.

And you can just use a word like "Oh, it was enjoyable.

It was really enjoyable, I'm glad we came, and see you again soon.", that sort of thing.

So, I hope that's given you some ideas of how you would talk to your friend about a

play and anyone you see afterwards, if you're having a conversation a few days later and

you're telling them about the play that you went to see, you can tell them a little bit

about it, too, using the similar sorts of ideas here.

Okay, so, if you'd like to go the website www.engvid.com , there is quiz there to test

you on this lesson, and thanks for watching and hope to see you again soon.

Bye for now.