found: The concise Oxford dictionary of literary terms, ©2004, via WWW, Feb. 20, 2014(metadrama or metatheatre, drama about drama, or any moment of self‐consciousness by which a play draws attention to its own fictional status as a theatrical pretence. Normally, direct addresses to the audience in prologues, epilogues, and inductions are metadramatic in that they refer to the play itself and acknowledge the theatrical situation; a similar effect may be achieved in asides. In a more extended sense, the use of a play‐within‐the‐play, as in Hamlet, allows a further metadramatic exploration of the nature of theatre, which is taken still further in plays about plays, such as Luigi Pirandello's Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore)
found: Oxford encyclopedia of theatre and performance, ©2003, via WWW, Feb. 20, 2014(Metatheatre. Self-reflexive drama or performance that reveals its artistic status to the audience. The reflexivity may be embedded in a script's structure by the playwright, when it can be called metadrama, or superimposed in production by the director or designer.)
found: The UVic writer's guide, via WWW, Feb. 20, 2014(Metadrama and metafiction are modes of writing that comment on their own activities: they are self-reflexive. Metadramatic and metafictional techniques have returned in many recent plays and novels: plays by Tom Stoppard and Peter Shaffer are examples)
found: MetaDrama and MetaTheatre : drama, theatre and performance about drama, theatre and performance, via WWW, Feb. 20, 2014(an inordinate number of plays exercise a self-reflexive interest the possibilities and responsibilities of playwright, actor, and audience; meta-fiction, meta-drama, and meta-theatre; plays within plays; broken narrative frameworks; self-referentiality and self-consciously marked theatrical play; theatrical performances of everyday rituals and performance)
found: Müller-Wood, A. Early modern metadrama, 2007, via WWW, Feb. 20, 2014:p. 5 (metadramatic theatre; the term "metatheater" was coined in the 1960s by Lionel Abel, who argued that this self-reflective theatre must be seen as a third genre besides comedy and tragedy) p. 6 (Metatheater encompasses all forms of theatrical self-referentiality--not only plays within the play, but also role playing, self-conscious reference the conventions of drama and to other plays as well as the inclusion of ritualistic and ceremonial enactments; metadramatic play)
found: Gibson, T. Plays of plays, by plays, and for plays : the self-reflexive drama of the 17th and 18th centuries, via WWW, Feb. 20, 2014.
found: Wiktionary, Feb. 20, 2014(metadrama (plural metadramas) A play that features another play as part of its plot.)
found: OED online, Feb. 20, 2014(metatheatre/metatheater: Theatre which draws attention to its unreality, esp. by the use of a play within a play; (also) those particular parts of a drama which exemplify this device.)
