Download Theatre History Part 3

Shamanism
• Common to all traditional cultures, the
shaman is a priestly figure who communicates
directly with the gods through ritual for the
benefit of the community. Employing
elements of performance such as
characterization, dialogue, music, song, dance,
illusion, clowing, ventriloquism, and
hypnotism.
Dance
• Expressing the rhythms of life and common to
all humanity, dance is another origin of
theatre. Animal imitation, pantomime,
gymnastics, and rhythmic movement
entertained all early humans.
Ritual Dates to 2500 B.C
• Through repeated, unvaring, and symbolic
actions of ritual, early humans sought to
achieve success in battle and hunting; to
ensure adequate rain and sun; to express their
duty to the community and to the Gods. The
art and artifacts of preliterate peoples around
the world all attest to this universal human
habit of ritual that appears to have ben the
original theatre.
Storytelling
• Closely related to ritual is myth. Myth and
stories have certainly entertained and
educated human beings since the beginnins of
language. Oral storytelling traditions like the
Odyssey. With human tendency to imitate
and elaborate, these tales provided a great
storehouse of plots for subsequent dramatists.
Origin of Greek Theatre
• The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who
observed the basic human tendency to
imitate, recognized the origins of Greek
Theatre in the dithyramb, a hymn sung and
danced to honor the god Dionysus. This had
evolved from earlier ecstatic dances by female
celebrants of shamanism.
• Showed Episodes from the God’s Life.
Roman Theatre
• Theatre for Entertainment
• Used Stock Characters
Golden Age of Greece
Greek Drama 500-400 B.C.
• The Greeks of Athens invented Western
Drama. Athenian playwrights used myths and
legends drawn from Homer and other sources,
but shaped them to reflect contemporary
issues. Theatre was a civic duty: the writer and
actor helped the people confront current
political or religious problems.
Decline of Western Theatre (692 A.D)
• Before the byzantine Emperor Justinian
married her, the Empress Theodora was an
actress. While secular authority wavered, the
Church firmly opposed the Theatre. In 692
A.D. a Church council passed a resolution
intended to forbid theatrical performances of
all kinds. This ended Theatre in the WEST.
Sanskrit Drama 200 A.D.
• Theatre in India
• Natyasastra (The Science of Dramaturgy) was
the first guide to acting, makeup, costume,
and dance. Plays in India’s classical language,
SANSKRIT, appeared as early as 100 A. D., but
the best date from after 320.
• Sanskrit plays were never tragic, good
triumphed evil.
Theatre in China
(618-906)
• Tang Dynasty in China, the elements of story,
dance, song, and comic pantomime came
together in a single performance. Unlike the
permanent theatre space typical of Greek
Drama, the performance are in China was
established by the simple method of drawing
a chalk circle on the ground.
Medieval Theatre (925)
• Medieval Theatre grew out of religious ritual;
in the case of Easter liturgy of the Church. The
story of Christ’s Resurrection was transformed
into dramatic dialogue delivered by priests.
Types of Medieval Drama
• Mystery Play—depicted episodes from the
Bible.
• Miracle Play—depicted the lives of saints or
martyrs.
• Morality Play—personified virtues and vices in
dramas depicting the moral struggle of the
soul.
Hroswitha and Hildegard (900s)
• German nun (Hwoswitha) became the 1st
woman to write plays for over a thousand
years. She wrote in a comic form to tell the
lives about saintly women and teach lessons
about virtue.
• Hildegard was a German nun who wrote
musical plays which personified virtues aid the
human soul in its struggle to get to heaven.
Noh Drama (1300s)
• Kanami Kiyotsugu and Zeami Motokiyo
developed Noh Drama, one of the great
traditional forms of Japanese theatre. In Noh
plays, masked male actors employ highly
stylized dance and poetry to tell stories of
ghosts, doomed love, and revenge.
Rennaisance Set Design 1400s
• Enabled rennissance builders to reconstruct
classical scenic designs
• Sebastinano Serilo’s Architettura (1545)
followed this classical tradition, but was
greatly influenced by the Renaissance
innovaton of linear perspective.
• Set Design could be used for any type of play.
Commedia Dell’arte (1500s)
• Its origins shrouded in mystery, commedia
dell’arte, a professional form of theatrial
improvisation with STOCK CHARACTERS and
standard comic routines, or lazzi, became very
popular in ITALY and flourished for 200 years.
Rise of English Drama
• Ideas came late to England, and Midevil
influences went well into the 1500s. Elizabeth
1 banned all religious plays.
• Christopher Marlowe—playwright for Dr.
Faustus, play combined new conventions of
England and elements of a medieval morality
play.
William Shakespeare
• Playwright
• Wrote Histories, Comedies, Tragedies, and
Pastoral.
• He thought that the script is only important
until the actors knew their lines.
• Never published until after death in FIRST
FOLIO of 1623.
• Noted for having “immortal” characters
Kabuki Theatre
• One of the prinicipal forms of Japanese
theatre, Kabuki came into existence around
1600 when a female dancer named Okuni
created performances combining traditional
Buddhist dances with more popular
contemporary forms. Kabuki performances by
women were banned inaugurating the
tradition of female impersonation by male
actors.
French Neoclassical Theatre
• Based on critical theories of Greek thinker
Aristotle and the Roman poet Horace, the
neoclassical ideal was influential throughout
Europe in the mid 1600s. Time, Place, Action;
division of plays into five acts; purity of genre;
and the concepts of decorum and
verisimilitude were taken as rules of
playwriting.
Masques
• Popular from the early 1600s, English court
masques were expensive, lavish spectacles
that combined huge casts, gorgeous
costumes, scenry, and music, and elaborate
stagecraft flying machines.
Moliere
• Comedic playwright, inspired by commedia
dell’arte.
• Introduced indoor settings in his works.
• Died onstage during a performance
• Famous Play—Tartuffe, a study of religious
hypocrisy.
Restoration Drama
• Comedy of Manners, Aristocratic personalities
were amplified and mocked.
• Saw the arrival of the first women to act
professionally.
Spain’s Golden Age
• 1580-1680, coinciding the the height of
Spain’s wealth and power, this period saw the
work of such playwrights as Lope de Vega and
Pedro Calderon de la Barca.
• The typical performance space in this era was
a corral, or courtyard theatre.
David Garrick
• The greatest British actor of the 1700s, Garrick
dominated the stage from his sensational
debut as Richard III.
• Garrick managed the Drury Lane Theatre,
where he introduced a number of
innovations, including closely supervised
rehearsals, 3D stage settings, and concealed
stage lighting.
Theatre in America
• The first playhouse in the American colonies
was built in Williamsburg, Va in 1716.
• Colonial theatre got a new start with the
arrival in 1752 of English acting troupe headed
by William Hallam, which marks the beginning
of professional theatre in America.
Middle-Class Audience
• 1700s, the middle class emerged as the dominant
element among British theatregoers. This taste
developed two new theatrical forms—
sentimental comedy and domestic tragedy.
• Sentimental comedy—Steel’s (The Funeral)--the
emphasis is not on the laughter, but is on virtue
triumphant.
• Domestic tragedy—Lillo’s (The London Merchant)
shows the destruction of a good man who yields
to Temptaion.
Goldoni vs. Gozzi
• Itallian Theatre
• Both playwrights used Commedia dell’arte in
different ways.
• Goldoni wrote plays in which the stock
characters and situations of the commedia
were made more realistic.
• Gozzi wrote plays that emphasized the
fantastic elements that Goldoni avoided.
Laughing Comedy
• In 1773, British playwright Oliver Goldsmith
attacked the sentimental comedy and
proposed a “laughing comedy.” This was more
realistic and more humorous.
Melodrama
• Characterized by cliff-hanging plots and heart
tugging emotional appeals
• Popular in America during the 1st half of the
1800s. Related to sentimental comedy and
domestic tragedy in its strongly moralistic
character, melodrama celebrated virtue above
all else and insisted that vice would ultimately
be punished.
• Example—Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Georg Buchner
• German Playwright
• Reacted against Romanticism
• Wrote Woyzeck, and he used sympathetic
treatment of a lower-class character
destroyed by factors of heredity and
environment anticipated naturalism.
Peking Opera
• During the 1800s, acting companies based in
the Chinese capital of Peking assumed a
dominant role in the theatre in China,
establishing the Peking Opera.
• Emphasis is placed on the performance of
actors.
• All parts are played by males.
Sturm and Drang
• German
• Means Storm and Stress
• In the late 1700s, German theatre was
changed radically by Romantic Movement
known as S and D, which idolized Shakespeare
and dismissed the neoclassical unities.
Henrik Ibsen
• Father of Modern Drama
• Norwegian
• Ranged in Style
– Peer Gynt (1867) folk tale
– A Doll’s House (1879) realism
– Dead Awaken (1899) symbolism
The Meiningen Troupe
• German
• The Duke of Saxe-Meiningen made his court
theatre the most highly respected touring
company of the period and became the first
true theatre director.
Bernard Shaw
• Shaw wanted theatre to explore controversial
issues.
• Influenced by Ibsen
Moscow Art Theatre
• One of the most influential theatre companies
in history, formed by Konstantin Stanislavski
and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1898.
• Empahasized Stainislavski’s “inner truth” in
acting rather than external effect and
influenced by movements in naturalism and
realism.
Anton Chekhov
• Playwright, Russian
• His plays evokes the atmosphere of a society
on the edge of change, where individuals feel
such uncertainty that they attempt to distract
themselves with routine and daydreams.
• Goes beyond simple realism.
The Arrival of Cinema
• 1880s by Thomas Edison and George Eastman
as an experimental toy, the motion picture
developed rapidly. From the first, the stage
provided stars and stories for the movies. This
scene is from a film featuring Sarah Bernhardt
as Queen Elizabeth.
Rabindranath Tagore
• Indian poet and playwright, influenced by
Sanskrit drama, His plays often include dance,
mime, and song. Works are often symbolic.
• First modern Indian dramatist to achieve a
world wide reputation, recievigng the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1913.
Constructivism
• Antirealist artistic movement developed in
Russia.
• Designs are machine like in abstract forms.
Expressionism
• European artistic movement
• Distorted and Fragmented view of reality
centered on the individual perception of the
main character
Eugene O’Neill
• Influential American playwright.
• Plays include, “The Hairy Ape,” “Strange
Interlude.”
• Influenced by Greek Theatre. Wrote “Morning
becomes Electra”
Lillian Hellman
• Mr. Moore’s Favorite playwright
• Most significant female playwright of the 20s
and 30s.
• “The Little Foxes” and “The Childrens Hour”—
delt with controversial issues and showed
concern for social justice.
Epic Theatre
• Also known as “Theatre of alienation”
• Created by Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator
• Employed frankly artificial devices such as
posters, cartoons, and film sequences in order
to distance the audience from theatrical
illusion and allow them to focus on the play’s
message.
Arthur Miller
• American Realism playwright.
• Realism—Real People doing real things.
Broadway Musicals
• The Golden Age of Broadway began in 1943
with the production of Oklahoma. It typified
shows with simple plots, memorable songs,
large casts and choruses, and lavish multiple
sets.
Lorraine Hansberry
• She only completed two plays— “A raisin in
the sun” and “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s
Window.”
Hispanic American Theatre
• Contemporary Hispanic American Theatre
began with the Teatro Campesino
(Farmworker’s Theatre) founded in 1965 by
Luis Valdez to further the cause of striking
farmworkers. Valdez later reached Broadway
with his play ZOOT SUIT.
August Wilson
• August Wilson commitment to portraying
African Americans realistically and sensitively
and to “raise consciousness through theatre.”
• Playwright
Ntozake Shange
• Playwright
• For colored girls who have considered
suicide/when the rainbow is enuf was a
groundbreaking work when it appeared in the
mid 1970s.
• Combining poetry, music, dance, and drama
Julie Taymor
• Designer
• Taymor designs for productions such as Juan
Darien and The Lion King reflect her extensive
study of the world theatre and commitment
to multicultural theatre.