Metadrama as an Approach to Appreciating Drama

الملخص

This paper seeks to explore the dramatic techniques which collaborate to make a play a metadrama. A metadrama is a drama about drama, that is, when a play keeps drawing our attention to itself as a performance, and hence, makes us realize that we are watching a play. The play's self-reflexivity or self-referentiality lies in such metadramatic tools as the the-play-within-the-play, or meta-play or playlet whose very names indicates its identity. Other metadramatic tools are role-playing, ceremony within the play, literary reference and self-reference. This paper concludes by emphasizing the vital role these metadramatic tools play in re-enforcing the play's identity as an organic whole, that is, a coherent work where the form and the content are harmonious.