Egyptian Roots
 c.2500 bce
 Ritual Enactment
 Abydos Passion Play re-enacted the story
of the death and resurrection of Osiris
Greek Festivals
 Festivals honored Olympian gods
 Ritual Competitions
 Olympics: Apollo
Athletics
 Lyric Poetry
 Drama: Dionysos
 Dithyrambic Choruses
 Tragedy
 Comedy
Greek Theatre
 6th - 4th century bce
 Originated in festivals honoring Dionysos
Thespis (6th c. bce)
Tragedy:
Aeschylus (524-456 bce)
Sophocles (496-406 bce)
Euripides (480-406 bce)
 Comedy:
Aristophanes (c. 485- c.385 bce)
Old Comedy: bawdy and satiric
New Comedy: social situations
Roman Theatre
2nd c. bce - 4th c. ce
 Origins in Greek drama and Roman
festivals
Tragedy: Seneca
5 act structure
Revenge motif -- sensationalistic
Ghosts and supernatural
 Comedy:Terence and Plautus
Boy meets girl, complications, boy
gets girl: marriage
Bawdy
Stock characters
Roman Spectacle
Gladiatorial combats
Naval battles in a flooded Coliseum
“Real-life” theatricals
Decadent, violent and immoral
All theatrical events banned by Church
when Rome became Christianized
Medieval Drama: 13th-15th C.
Arose from need to educate converted, illiterate
Christians about Christianity
Hrotsvita (10th c.), German nun, wrote plays
about Christian matyrs using structure based on
Terence’s Roman comedies
Liturgical drama
Mystery plays: Biblical tales
Miracle plays: Saints’ lives
Morality plays: Allegories
Italian Commedia dell’ Arte
La Commedia dell'Arte, "Artistic
Comedy,” began in the second half of
the 16th century
 Based on set pieces, lazzi, that are
improvised with stock characters
A distinct group of actors gave birth to
the first nucleus of companies, and
started doing their acts on simple
stages set outdoors
The mix of popular themes, complex
stories, acrobatic jumps and mellow
love scenes made it highly influential
throughout Europe
Harlequino
Elizabethan Theatre: 16th-17th C.
 Protestant Reformation closed down
religious drama
 Tudor love of spectacle and patronage of
drama
 Elizabethan poetry -- love of language
 Influenced by Roman theatre, Renaissance
ideas, medieval stagecraft and pagan
remnants
 Important theatrical period even if
Shakespeare had never lived
French Neoclassical Theatre,
17th-18th C.
 Modelled theatre on Greek and Roman examples
 Disdained English Elizabethan theatre’s
“messiness” and eclecticism
 Neoclassical Conventions
 Decorum
 Verisimilitude
 Universal truths
 Poetic: Alexandrines
 5 act structure
 3 unities: time, place action
Tragedy and Comedy
 Rulers/nobility
 Affairs of state
 Unhappy ending
 Lofty poetic style
 Revealed the horrible
results of mistakes and
misdeeds committed
from passion
 Racine
 Middle class/bourgeosie
 Domestic/private affairs
 Happy ending – often
deus ex machina
 Ordinary speech
 Ridicules behavior that
should be avoided
 Moliere
German
Romantic
Theater: 18th19th C.
 “Stürm und Drang”
 Looked to Shakespeare for
models
 Sweeping historical and
tragic dramas
 Johann Goethe and
Friedrich Schiller
 Began to emphasize
historical accuracy in
costumes and settings
 Improved theatrical effects - footlights, revolving stages,
theatrical machinery
Theatre of
sentimentality -emotional appeal
Heroes and villains -and lily-white heroines
Wide popular appeal
Sensationalistic
Most widely performed
play of the 19th C:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
based on Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s novel
Melodrama:
19th Century
Realism and Naturalism
19th-20th C.
 Intellectual reaction against popular theatre
 Theatre of social problems
 Influenced by emerging disciplines of
psychology and sociology
 Emerging importance of director
 Realistic stage conventions:
 Proscenium stage
 Audience as “fourth wall”
 Change in acting conventions
 Continued developments in stagecraft
Realism and Naturalism
• Middle class
• Psychological
• How can the individual
live within and influence
society?
• “Well-made play”
• Henrik Ibsen,
George Bernard Shaw
• Middle and Lower classes
• Sociological
• How does society/the
environment impact
individuals?
• “Slice of life”
• August Strindberg, Anton
Chekhov, John Synge,
Sean O’Casey
20th Century Theatre:
a hundred years of isms
 Symbolism
 Expressionism
 Futurism
 Surrealism
 Social Realism
 Epic Theatre
 Existentialism
 Absurdism
 Magic Realism
 Hyper-Realism
 Not to mention musicals,
films, street theatre, etc., etc.
And so… into the 21st Century
Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz
Winner of 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama