The Theatre of Ancient Greece
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Origins of Western Theatre traced to Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greek Beliefs:
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Humans can make significant decisions
Democracy
Not all people are equal: Greeks kept slaves and denied
women any public role in society
Happiness depends upon harmony between human and
supernatural forces
Numerous gods: conceived of as immortal human beings
with flaws
City Dionysia
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Religious and Civic celebration
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534 B.C. first recorded contest for Best Tragedy
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Winner Thespis
Competition
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3 dramatists compete
Each presents 3 tragedies and 1 satyr play
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satyr play = short, comic play poking fun at a Greek myth using a chorus
of satyrs (half-man/half-goat characters)
5 days of performances
Performances started at dawn and probably lasted all day
Plays open to everyone, but primary audience - men and boys
City Dionysia
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3 tragedies x 3 playwrights = 9 tragedies per City Dionysia
9 tragedies x 100 years = 900 tragedies during 5th century B.C.
32 plays have survived
All 32 plays written by 3 dramatists:
• Aeschylus (523-456 B.C.)
• Sophocles (496-406 B.C.)
• Euripides (480-406 B.C.)
• Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex often considered the best
The Theatre of Dionysus
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Paradoi = spaces between skene and auditorium
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Eccyclema = wheeled platform
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Used for choral entrances and exits
Used because acts of violence could not be shown onstage
Rolled or pushed into the performance space to show
consequences of violent acts (such as slain characters)
Machina = crane-like device
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Used to “fly” gods into the performance space
Deus ex Machina (God from the machine) = contrived ending
The Performers
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Functions of the Chorus:
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Formed a collective character who expressed opinions, gave
advice, and occasionally threatened to interfere in the action
Often seemed to express the author’s point of view
Served as the ideal spectator, reacting as the author wanted the
audience to react
Helped to establish mood and to heighten dramatic effects
Added color, movement and spectacle through singing and
dancing
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The Performers
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Masks:
All performers except musicians wore masks
Distinctive convention of Greek Theatre
Masks covered entire head and included hair/headdress
Function of Masks:
• Facilitated rapid change of roles
• Enabled male performers to embody female characters more
easily
• Helped actors to assume different types of roles
• Assisted communication by capturing and emphasizing essential
character qualities
Greek Comedy
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Conventions:
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Usually concerned with current issues
Sometimes used mythological material
Chorus size = 24
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• Not always identical in appearance
• Sometimes depicted as citizens, sometimes as nonhumans
Male characters made to appear ridiculous
• Costume suggested partial nakedness
• Wore large phallus
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Wore masks
Greek Comedy
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Plays:
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Only 11 Old Comedy plays have survived
All surviving plays by Aristophanes
Old Comedy plots revolve around a “happy idea”
Time and place may change frequently
Unity through idea rather than through causally related events
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Characters may speak to or about the audience
The Roman Theatre Experience
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Ludi = “games”
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Religious festivals that included theatrical performances
Theatrical performances honored several gods
Theatrical performances considered diversions, like sports
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Borrowed from Greek drama, but adapted it to Roman tastes
Romans preferred variety entertainments
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short comic plays
dancing, singing
juggling, acrobatics
gladiatorial contests
Roman Comedy
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Plays:
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Surviving comedies = 26
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All surviving plays by Plautus and Terence
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Deal with everyday domestic affairs
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Plots turn on misunderstandings
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Most famous character = “clever slave”
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Include music; some characters sing
Other Roman Drama and Theatre
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Roman Tragedy:
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Mime:
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Surviving tragedies = 9
All surviving plays by Seneca
Favorite form of entertainment
First time women were permitted to perform
No masks
Dramatic action centered on sexual encounters
Blood Sports:
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Gladiatorial contests
Trade Guilds and the Corpus Christi Festival
• Outdoor religious dramas in England
• Connected to Trade Guilds
• Church created new feast day in 1311: Corpus Christi
• All Biblical events could be connected with this festival
Conventions of Medieval Theatre
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Time:
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Contrast of eternal versus earthly
time
Stage:
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Depicts heaven at one end and hell at
the other end
Could be fixed or mobile
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Scenic structures to indicate place =
mansion
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Undifferentiated space = platea
Other Medieval Theatre and Drama
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Morality Plays:
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Farces:
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Allegories of moral temptations
Most famous play: Everyman
Served as transition between medieval religious drama and secular
drama of Shakespeare’s time
Secular comic drama: emerged 13th century
Not encouraged officially
Emphasized ridiculous aspects or human behavior
Example: Pierre Patelin
Interludes:
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Nonreligious, serious or comic; performed between parts of
celebration
Elizabethan Theatre
Professional Groups:
– Had to perform often
– Had to have a large stock of plays to sustain audience interest
– Had to play in space large enough to accommodate sizeable
paying audience; had to be able to control access to space
– Had to control all production elements
– Had to assemble company that could work full time
Elizabethan Theatre
Professional Groups:
– Acting was not considered an acceptable profession
– Because acting did not fit into the guild system, actors were
considered masterless men
– Companies petitioned noblemen to serve as patrons
 Patronage legitimized companies to an extent
 Patrons provided little financial support
 Companies had to be licensed
 Plays had to be approved
The Globe Theatre
Theatrical Conventions:
• Properties brought onto stage when needed (throne, bed)
• Façade served as backdrop for all performances; location clarified
by dialogue: spoken décor
• Most characters were costumed in contemporary Elizabethan dress
• Companies composed of approximately 25 members:
 Shareholders
 Hired men
 Apprentices
The Theatre Experience in Renaissance Italy
Principles of perspective drawing (developed in 15th century) added to
scenery (in 16th century)
• Signaled movement away from formal, architectural stage to
representational, pictorial stage
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Picture broken up and painted on 3 separate scenic elements:
side wings, backdrops, overhead borders
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Floor of stage raked upwards towards back
Introduction of proscenium arch, which framed the painted
elements to complete the picture
Resulted in need for mechanisms to shift scenery
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The Theatre Experience in Renaissance Italy
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Intermezzi = interludes performed between the acts of regular
plays
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Suggested parallels between a mythological figure and the
person being honored at the festival
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Major features = music and dance
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Elaborate special effects
Opera = combined drama, music, dance, spectacle, special effects
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Originated in the 1590s
Commedia dell’Arte
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Commedia dell’Arte = comedy of professional artists
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Actor as most essential element of form
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Adaptability: could perform in virtually any space, with or
without scenery
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Scenario = summary of situations, complications, outcome;
functioned as script
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Improvisation: distinguishing feature of commedia
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Lazzi: bits of comic business
Commedia dell’Arte
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Stock Characters
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2.
Lovers:
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Most realistic roles
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Only characters that did not wear masks
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Dressed fashionably
Masters: 3 recurred most often
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3.
Pantalone: elderly Venetian merchant
Dottore: lawyer or doctor
Capitano: braggart and coward
Servants = zanni
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Minimum of 1 clever and 1 stupid
Most popular = Arlecchino (Harlequin)
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Acrobat, dancer, and used slapstick
Wore black mask and hat
The French Neoclassical Ideal
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Firm genre restrictions: tragedy and comedy should not mix
Tragedy must be about royalty and nobles
Comedy should deal with middle and lower classes
Characters should exhibit decorum
All plays should be written in 5 acts
Neoclassical Unities:
• Time: all play’s action should occur within 24 hour period
• Place: all play’s action should occur in one location
• Action: there should be only one plot
Ending of play should uphold poetic justice
Purpose of drama = to teach and to please
Molière and Seventeenth-Century French
Theatre Practice
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Unlike Elizabethan Theatre, French companies included both male
and female actors
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Each actor played a limited range of roles, eventually organized
into lines of business
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Actors had to furnish own costumes; blend of contemporary
fashions and some historical dress
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Plays were set in one place; no scene changes; generalized scenery
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Plays performed indoors, using candles and oil lamps for lighting
The Elizabethan, Italian, and
French Traditions
• Although Shakespeare and Molière were separated in
time by only a few years, they worked in different
theatrical traditions
• When the English theatres reopened in 1660, the
influence of Commedia dell’Arte was clearly evident in
the new style of plays written
• By the 18th century theatres throughout Europe shared
the same basic conventions
Chapter 6: From Romanticism to Realism
• Attitudes toward Neoclassicism began changing toward
the end of the 18th century
• Writers of the Sturm and Drang (Storm and Stress)
school in Germany began writing serious plays that
experimented both with bold subjects and dramatic
form.
• Neoclassical ideals reversed almost completely by early
19th century, resulting in the development of
Romanticism
Romanticism
The less a thing deviates from its natural state the
more truthful it is
• Shakespeare’s plays became an argument for ignoring
the rules of neoclassicism
• Mysterious and supernatural became common
occurrences
• Historical accuracy in settings and costumes was favored
Melodrama
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The popular-culture manifestation of Romanticism
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Melodrama = “music drama”
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Action accompanied by musical score that enhanced emotional
tone
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Emphasized clear moral tone and suspenseful plots
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Set pattern of action: Good are rewarded and Evil are punished =
poetic justice
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Characters were stereotypes (Good, Evil)
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Elaborately staged spectacle
Melodrama
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Created variety through use of:
• Exotic locales
• Special effects
• Latest inventions
• Dramatizations of popular novels and notorious
crimes
• Horses for “equestrian melodramas”
• Water tanks for “aquatic melodramas”
Melodrama
• With advent of electricity (1880s), electric motors were
used with treadmills to stage horse or chariot races
• Panoramas were rigged on spools and moved in time
with the treadmills; panoramas = long cloths on which
continuous scenes were painted
• Efforts to make action as realistic as possible by using
machinery and special effects
The Advent of Realism
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Darwin’s theories (1859)
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All forms of life have developed gradually from a common
ancestry
2. Evolution of species explained by “survival of the fittest”
Implications of Darwin’s theories
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Heredity and environment as primary causes for everything humans
are or do
People cannot be held fully responsible for their actions since heredity
and environment cannot be fully controlled
Progress
Humans are like other animals; not separate from nature
Change, rather than fixity, as the norm
The Advent of Realism
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Freud’s theories
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Basic human instincts = aggression and sexuality
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Without intervention, humans would seek to satisfy own
instincts without regard for others
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Need for socialization: rewards and punishments teach
acceptable behavior and develop a superego
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Superego = an interior, subconscious censor or judge
Right and wrong are not absolute; relative to individual,
family, society
Realism and Naturalism
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Grounded in scientific outlook: need to understand human
behavior in terms of natural cause and effect
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Pursuit of truth: knowledge that can be verified through the 5
senses
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The highest form of morality = truth
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Playwrights wrote primarily about contemporary subjects
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Introduced topics such as unsavory social conditions
Zola and Naturalism
• Naturalists believed that many Realists were more
concerned with theatrical effectiveness than with truth
• Play as a slice of life = a segment of reality transferred
to the stage
• Naturalism as short-lived movement that produced few
plays of significance
The Emergence of the Director
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Prior to late 19th century, staging plays was the responsibility
of the playwright, the head of the company, or the lead actor
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Growing need for someone to unify all production elements,
which were becoming more numerous and more complex
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2 key figures in the development and acceptance of the
modern director:
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Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
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Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1826-1914)
The Independent Theatre Movement
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By the late 1880s, a number of small
independent theatres exploited this loophole
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Products of the Independent Theatre
Movement
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Playwright George Bernard Shaw
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The Moscow Art Theatre
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Playwright Anton Chekhov
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Konstantin Stanislavsky and
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The Stanislavsky System of acting
Symbolism
• First artistic movement to reject representationalism
• Launched in 1885
• Truth is:
– beyond objective examination
– cannot be discovered through the 5 senses
– can only be intuited
– can only be hinted at through a network of symbols
Symbolism
Theatrical Conventions:
• Subjects taken from:
• the past
• the realm of fancy
• the mysterious present
• Symbolist drama tended to be vague and mysterious
• Most important aspect of production = mood or atmosphere
• Minimal scenery that lacked detail
• Gauze curtain hung between audience and stage = scrim;
represented the mist or a timeless void
Symbolism
Theatrical Conventions:
• Color chosen for mood
• Text often chanted
• Actors incorporated unnatural gestures
• Productions often baffled audiences
• Symbolist Theatre Movement ceased by 1900
Modernist Influence on Theatrical
Visionaries
 Adolphe Appia (1862-1928)
• Viewed artistic unity in theatre as fundamental, but
difficult to achieve because of conflicting elements:
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The moving actor, the horizontal floor, vertical scenery
Modernist Influence on Theatrical
Visionaries
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Adolphe Appia (1862-1928)
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Replaced flat, painted scenery with 3-dimensional scenic
structures
Used steps, platforms, and ramps to bridge the horizontal and
vertical planes
Used lighting from various directions and angles
• Viewed lighting as most flexible of the theatrical elements
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Could change moment to moment
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Could reflect shifts in mood and emotion
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Unified all other elements through intensity, color, direction,
movement
Modernist Influence on Theatrical
Visionaries
 Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966)
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Denied that theatre was a fusion of the other arts
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Theatre as a wholly autonomous art
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Elements of theatre (action, language, line, color, rhythm)
fused by master artist
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Once suggested that actors should be replaced by large
puppets
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Simplicity in scenery, costumes, lighting
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Director as supreme, unifying theatre artist
New Artistic Movements
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Futurism
Glorified the speed and energy of the machine age
Sought to replace old art forms with many new forms
• Collage
• Kinetic sculpture
• Bruitisme = “noise music”
Variety theatre as dynamic: involved audience, possessed dynamic energy
Synthetic drama: compresses essence of full-length play into 1 or 2
moments
Simultaneity and multiple focus
Lost appeal during WWI since it praised war as the supreme expression of
the aggressive life it championed
New Artistic Movements
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Dada
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Grounded in rejection of values that had provoked WWI
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Sought to replace logic, reason, and unity in art with chance and illogic
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Used simultaneity and multiple focus
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“chance poems” = created by placing words in a hat and drawing them out
at random
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“sound poems” = composed of nonverbal sounds
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Short plays, dances, music
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Essentially anarchistic
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Dada continued after WWI, but lost most of its energy
New Artistic Movements
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Expressionism
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Contended that materialism and industrialism perverted the human spirit
by turning humans into machines
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Sought to achieve “the regeneration of man”
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Emphasis on text
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Protagonist on a quest for identity, fulfillment, or means to change the
world
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Scenery presented a distorted world: leaning walls, green sky
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A nightmarish vision of the human situation
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Popularity of form faded after the 1920s
Epic Theatre
• Developed in Germany during the 1920s
• Chief practitioner = Bertolt Brecht
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Sought to make audiences evaluate the socioeconomic
implications of what they saw in the theatre
• Wanted the audience to watch theatre actively and
critically
• Concept of alienation = distancing spectators from
stage events so that they may view them critically
Theatre as a place to recognize problems that are then to be
solved outside of the theatre.
Epic Theatre
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Achieving Alienation
Reminded audience that it was in the theatre by calling attention
to the theatre’s means:
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Placed lighting instruments in full view
Used fragmented scenery
• Made support for suspended objects visible
Actors encouraged to present rather than to become their characters
• Spoke of their characters in the third person
• Often commented on the action of the play
• Story distanced through time or place
Artaud and the Theatre of Cruelty
• Referred to as Theatre of Cruelty because it forced the
audience, against its wishes, to confront itself
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Ultimate purpose was a type of psychic shock therapy
• Proposed “a new language of theatre”
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Avoided proscenium arch theatres in favor of large,
undifferentiated spaces such as factories and airplane hangers
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Placed audience in the middle of the action
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Wanted to eliminate scenery entirely
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Used human voice for text and for non-textual emotional and
atmospheric effects
Post-World War II European Drama &
Theatre
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Many in Europe questioned the very foundation of
truth and values
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Existentialism
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Pursued questions of truth, values, and moral responsibility
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Jean-Paul Sartre:
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Denied existence of God
Denied the validity of fixed standards of conduct
Denied the possibility of verifiable moral codes
Human beings as “condemned to be free” = individuals must
choose the values by which they will live
Post-World War II European Drama &
Theatre
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Albert Camus:
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Human condition as absurd
• From this came the label absurdist
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Humans long for clarity and certainty, but the universe is
irrational
Only option: individuals must choose the standards by which they
will live
Both Sartre and Camus were convinced that we can examine our
situation and make decisions that permit us to act meaningfully in
accordance with those decisions.
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Absurdist Drama
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Emerged in France (1950)
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Absurdists accepted views of Sartre and Camus about the human
condition
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But, saw no way out of condition because rational and meaningful
choices seemed impossible in such a universe
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Truth = chaos; lack of order, logic, certainty
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Play structures abandon cause-and-effect relationships
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Play structures reveal associational patterns reflecting illogic and
chance
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Most influential playwright = Samuel Beckett
Alternative Theatre Groups
Some Off-Off-Broadway theatres were formed as
a means for provoking social, political, or
artistic change
• The Living Theatre (1960s)
• Epitomized rebellion against established authority
• Most extreme piece = Paradise Now
• Included nudity, obscene language, provocation of
audience
• Blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality
• Company gained notoriety
• Tested limits of permissibility
Alternative Theatre Groups
• The Bread and Puppet Theatre (1961)
• Used both actors and giant puppets to
enact parables denouncing war and
materialism
• The San Francisco Mime Theatre (1966)
• Performed satirical pieces promoting civil
rights and other causes
• Open Theatre (1963)
• Founded by Joseph Chaikin
• Concerned with the performer’s
“transformation”
Poor and Environmental Theatres
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“Poor” Theatres
Jerzy Grotowski, director of the Polish
Lab Theatre
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Eliminated all theatrical elements
considered unessential
Hoped such elimination would lead to
the rediscovery of theatre
Concluded that only 2 elements are
essential: actor and audience
Known for methods of actor training
Experimented with spatial
relationships between actors and
audience
Theatre = Modern Tribal Ceremony
Broadway and Musicals after
Subsidization
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In 1968, musicals underwent a significant changes:
• Rock Music
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Hair (1968)
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Godspell (1970)
• Presentational Style
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A Chorus Line (1976)
• Experimentation with various approaches
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Stephen Sondheim
Broadway and Musicals after
Subsidization
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Stephen Sondheim:
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Considered the most influential writer of musicals for
contemporary theatre
Works depart from upbeat optimism of earlier musicals
Works offer ironic and melancholic views of human behavior
Works avoid happy endings
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Key works include:
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Company
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Sweeney Todd
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Into the Woods
Broadway and Musicals after
Subsidization
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Stephen Sondheim:
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Songs and music much more complex in both function and
musical expression
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Filled with inner tensions
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Subtext is a significant element
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The American musical is said to have lost its vitality after 1970
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The most popular musicals were imported from England