THE HISTORY OF THEATRE

Part 1

1. HOW DID GERTRUDE DIE IN HAMLET?

INTERESTING FACT & BELLRINGER

THEATRE HISTORY

• Theatre began with imagination games; roll playing, dress up, acting someone you were not.• These games can be reminders of our past triumphs or preparations for the future, celebrations of our glories or rehearsals for our trials• Playing is a natural human activity through which we try to understand how our universe works and how to prepare for the future

THE BEGINNINGS OF THEATRE - PREHISTORY

• Early cave dwellers would act out the stories that were painted on the cave walls.

• They would gather around the fire and the hunter or the leader would paint their faces using to signify the blood of their kill, which the stories were usually about

• As the hunter told his story he would become the hero

• He would elaborate the details in the story, he would draw out the suspense and physically act out the role impersonating himself in the story

• This is just a simple form of theatre

GREEK THEATRE

• The tragedies written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and the comedies Aristophanes are still performed today. All were Greek playwrights

• Their plays were performed in large, open air amphitheaters where those plays were originally performed are still standing and are still in use

• The best preserved ancient Greek theatre is at Epidaurus. It is located about 2 hours south of Athens and is still used today for performances of the ancient tragedies. The theatre can attract 12,000 just as it did more than 2,ooo years ago.

• Many scholars believed that ancient Greeks 1st performed theatre by dancing and singing in their threshing circles, greek farmers built stone rings and filled them with newly cut wheat, the seeds separate from the stalk, after completing the harvest

• From their celebration was born the chorus, a group of performers who sang and danced in both tragedies and comedies, often commenting on the action; in later times a group of singers who performed with or without instrumental accompaniment.

EPIDAURUS

• Epidaurus is build in the hillside

• The major playing space was a circle and the similarity to the farmers threshing circle seems evident

• The seating was carved out of the hillside and the audience sat in the open air on the benches of the “theatron” where we get the word theatre from (seeing place)

• Most of the action took place on the large circle, the orchestra (dancing place), where the actors who made up the chorus danced and sang

• Many scholars believed that in the middle of the orchestra was the thymele, an altar to the god Dionysus

• Behind the circular orchestra was a freestanding building called the skene

• In front of the skene may have been a proskene, a narrow raised platform where the principal actors performed

• Between the seating in the theatron and the freestanding skene was a large aisle, the parados, where the chorus made its ceremonial entrance at the beginning of the performance

GREEK THEATRE• The scripts of the ancient plays reveal that the Greeks

used wagons and many of the other devices for moving scenery that we continue to use today.

• One of these devices was the mechane, a large crane that could hoist characters into the air above the stage in much the same way we fly Peter Pan in our theaters today

• Several American campuses have imitation Greek theatres, and theatres, and many universities perform ancient Greek dramas the way they were originally produced

Greek theatre replica, Berkley, Ca

Mechane

ROMAN THEATRE The Romans succeeded the Greeks as the important civilization of Europe, and they must have loved drama because they built theatres everywhere.

You can visit the ruins of Roman theatres in Turkey, North Africa and Spain as well

Roman theatres are similar to Greek ones, large, open air amphitheaters with no roofs.

But the Romans built their theatres on flat ground instead of carving them out of hillsides, and they also built the seating area.

The orchestra in Roman theatres is only a half circle, and the seats are connected to the skene, making the theatre a complete and unified structure instead of a space made up of parts separated by a big aisle.

The skene was huge in Roman theatres, in front of the skene is a platform large enough for a team of horses and a chariot

ROMAN THEATRE When the Roman Empire collapsed, Western European civilization lost its centralized government and unifying culture along with its respect for intellectual activities like reading, writing, and theatergoing

Theatre returned to its primitive state as local storytellers and wandering musicians entertained audiences wherever they could attract a crowd

No permanent theatre was built for a 1,000 years and players performed on makeshift stages that were set up in a found space like a town square, and quickly dismantled after the performance.

THEATRE IN THE MIDDLE AGES• The middle ages some plays were

performed by troupes of actors and acrobats who traveled in wagons that could be converted into temporary stages

• A platform could be attached to the side of the wagon for the actors to perform on, and a curtain could be hung off the top of the side of the wagon facing the audience

• The curtain might have a street painted on it, and it could be drawn open to reveal a second curtain with a house painted on it in much the same way a drop is revealed in wing and drop scenery

• The wagon served the same purpose as the Greek skene

• It was the backstage area that became known in later centuries as the tiring house

• In the later Middle ages the traveling actors wagons now called pageant wagons, became very elaborate

• The audience would gather various points throughout the city, just as people today stand on street corners to admire parade floats as they roll by.

• Each wagons performance was one short play in a long cycle of plays that told a story, and the audience remained in one place waiting for the next wagon to arrive the next short play

• The performances were presentational the actors spoke directly to the audience and sometimes hopped off the stage to mingle with the spectators

PAGEANT WAGONS

THEATRE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

If you have ever seen the end of a parade they you know that it concludes in a parking lot with all the floats lined up end to end

In the middle ages all the pageant wagons may have ended up in the town square, where the largest gathering of people could admire them.

The players from each wagon did their sketches one after another using not just their own small platform but all the platforms that had been lined up this is known as a mansion stage

Mansion stageThe term mansion stage described a wide stage with a number of separate houses attached to the back of it each depicting a unique location.

Theses houses could be built of solid materials and give the illusion of being 3-dimensional or they could be painted on the curtains at the back of the pageant wagons

One of the last Mansion stages can be found in Bratislava, Slovakia

QUIZ HISTORY OF THEATRE

1. List 3 ways that Greek and roman theatre differ.

2. What where most of the early cave stories about.

3. What is a threshing circle and why is it important in ancient Greek theatre.

4. What happened to theatre after the fall of the Roman Empire.

5. Explain what a pageant wagon is.

6. What was one of the names of the Roman amphitheaters we saw in the video?