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British
Theatre
Performance space and
theatrical conventions
Classical Antiquity
 Britain
is one province in the Roman
Empire


Outdoor performance spaces – audience
seated on hillside/slope above performers
Surviving theatres in St. Albans and Chester
 http://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/Sites/Ro
man-Town/Roman-Theatre
 www.chesterwalls.info/amphitheatre.html

These traditions lost with fall of Rome.
audience
backstage
performance
space
audience
St. Albans
Fall of Roman Empire ~450AD
 Theatre
disappears from Britain as Latin
speakers lost
Drama re-emerges after ~1200
 not
from a revival of classical Roman
traditions,
 but from the Christian rituals of the Mass.
Medieval Drama
 Place
of medieval drama in history of European
drama

no connection to classical drama
 not
entertainment
 not money-making

begins as liturgy or ritual
 dramatizing
host

liturgical moments, i.e.. elevation of the
supports religious values and practices
 earliest
dramatized liturgy reenacts the Passion and
the Resurrection
Plays performed in inner courtyards of medieval inns.
The George Inn in London
York Cycle (1 of 4 extant cycles)
 Begins
sometime after ~1325; closed
down by Reformation censors in
Elizabeth’s reign (~1580); this is
Shakespeare’s boyhood.
 Associated with towns – not villages or
hamlets – showed wealth, power, pride,
civic organization and institutions, literacy,
and religious belief.


Literate townsmen put on plays for less
literate farmers
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/resources/PSim/app
let/index.html
Cycle plays performed
on wagons in streets
of York over 1-3 days
in late June. Audience
stayed in place, and
wagons moved to ~12
viewing stations.
Played to crowds on 3
sides. Same script every
year. Compare to tailgate party.
Tudor Drama (1485-1603)
 Before

Elizabeth –
Some revivals of Latin/Roman dramatic
forms, especially tragedy
 Elizabethan
dramatists: first modern English
playwrights – theatres and admission costs


Theatre as business proposition
Money in acting, writing, but esp. producing
 How
to earn a living as a writer without a
wealthy patron
London ~ 1590
Today’s West End Theatres
National Theatre
London Eye
Many theatres south of the river in “Southwark” because
outside of control of London’s conservative aldermen.
Early Modern Public Theatre
 Large,
outdoor but partially roofed,
daylight only illumination
 Variety of standing/sitting price options
 In the 3/4ths (audience on three sides of a
thrust stage
 Three levels of play space (below stage
trapdoor; stage; balcony)
 Two back entrances
1599
Note thrust stage – audience on 3+ sides
Thus daily at two in the afternoon, London
has two, sometimes three plays running in
different places, competing with each other,
and those which play best obtain most
spectators. The playhouses are so constructed
that they play on a raised platform, so that
everyone has a good view. There are different
galleries and places, however, where the
seating is better and more comfortable and
therefore more expensive. For whoever cares
to stand below only pays one English penny,
but if he wishes to sit he enters by another
door, and pays another penny, while if he
desires to sit in the most comfortable seats
which are cushioned, where he not only sees
everything well, but can also be seen, then he
pays yet another English penny at another
door. And during the performance food and
drink are carried around the audience, so that
what one cares to pay one may also have
refreshment.
1647 woodcut
Note the thrust
stage, the three
levels on which
the audience may
sit, and the floor
space for the
“groundlings” to
stand.
~1550-1642
A modern production in the reconstructed Globe Theatre.
The stage lit by candles in the new Sam Wanamaker theatre
at the Globe, where we will see The Little Match Girl.
Middle Temple in Inns of Court – banquet hall and first performance space for Twelfth Night
Puritan Commonwealth ~1642-1660
 Charles
I executed 1649
 Theatres closed 1642, but re-opened on
Restoration of the Monarchy after death
of Oliver Cromwell in 1660.
 Charles II returned from exile in France
and brought “French fashions” into British
theatre
 women
performers
 proscenium stage rather than thrust stage
Mid 17th C French theatre with stage behind curtain
Proscenium Stage
 Dominates
British theatre from Restoration
(1660) to modernism (early 20th C)
 You have likely seen this theatre in your HS
auditorium.




Actors on stage behind curtain
Scene changes indicated by curtain
Audience sits in dark
Actors pretend audience not present
Some 20th & 21st C innovations
 Often



returns to earlier forms
Theatre in the round
Direct interactions audience/actors
Chorus or narrator
 Musical


Theatre
American origins,
but hugely popular in the UK
Stratford-Upon-Avon is home
to three stages on which Early
Modern (and other) plays are
performed.
This is the stage at the
National Theatre on the
South Bank near the
London Eye and Houses
of Parliament.
One stage on which we’ll see plays in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Curious Incident
Much Ado
Gielgud