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MTEL Theater Test Breakdown

Playwriting, Performance and Direction of Dramatic Works has three subareas with a total of 36 to 38 questions and counts 30 percent of the final score.

1. Playwriting and Dramatic Structure: principles and skills in writing and adapting a play, generating ideas, structuring a script, and dramatic styles, forms and genres.
2. Principles of Acting: historic styles, modern and contemporary training, techniques for developing tools, and characterizations and improvisation.
3. Principles of Directing: roles and functions, script selection and analysis, auditioning and casting, staging, and collaboration with cast, crew and community.

Design, Production and Management of Dramatic Works has two subareas with a total of 18 to 20 questions and counts 15 percent of the final score.

1. Producing and Managing Theatrical Performances: roles and responsibilities everyone involved in a production, selecting a play and the cast and crew, legal issues, planning, budgeting, scheduling, promoting, and managing productions.

2. Set, Costume, Lighting Design and Execution: design principles and elements and their application in various settings, historic periods and styles, and the basics of stagecraft.

Theater History and Dramatic Literature has four subareas with a total of 31 to 33 questions and counts 25 percent of the final score.

1. History of Drama and Theater: purposes throughout history, types, characteristics, elements and performance, and the impact of cultural, economic and political influences in the history of theater.
2. British and European Dramatic Literature: characteristics and major themes from ancient times to the present, major playwrights and their works, and developments in performance and production.
3. United States Dramatic Literature: characteristics, prominent people and major themes from the Pilgrims to the present, major playwrights and their works, and developments in performance and production.
4. Dramatic Literature from Other Cultural traditions: characteristics, prominent people and major themes from Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas, major playwrights and their works, and developments in performance and production.

Theater Education has two subareas with a total of 11 to 13 questions and counts 10 percent of the final score.

1. Children and Adolescents: teaching methods and approaches, artistic development in theater arts, and evaluation criteria for different age levels.
2. Interdisciplinary Nature: connection to other artistic expressions and in relation to the humanities.

MTEL Theater Test Practice Questions