Plays have existed long before musicals and operas came into being, dating back nearly 2,500 years to the 5th century B.C. By definition, “A stage play is a live theatrical performance where actors portray characters and tell a story through dialogue and action on a stage.” (The definitive guide to stage plays | Stageagent) Any music that is added to the play would purely be for ambience, or rather, background noise, and does not usually have any lyrics attached to the audio used. Plays are categorized at various levels, and they can also fall into various genres, as with movies and t.v. shows. shows. These sorts of plays are commonly known as “stage plays”, which are “...specifically crafted for performance on stage, distinct from works meant for broadcast or cinematic adaptation.” (Play (theatre)) Some well-known works, such as “Hamlet” or even “Romeo and Juliet”, classics written by William Shakespeare, are prime examples of successful stageplays.
In this snippet of “Hamlet,” performed by Andrew Scott, you can see the emotion not just in his face and voice, but also in the dramatic gestures as he delivers one of the notorious monologues, “To Be or Not To Be”. It is the Actor’s job within the play to convey their emotions solely through their voice, facial expressions, and body language, without musical accompaniment; in other words, they only have themselves to convey to the audience exactly what the character they are playing is feeling.