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ROMAN THEATRE • By 240 B.C., Greek Theatre was familiar to Romans, translated into Latin, and brought to Rome. The beginnings of Roman theatre recorded: the first record of drama at the Ludi Romani (Roman Festival or Roman Games). Rome became an empire after Julius Caesar, 27 B.C. Republic – from 509-27 B.C.Empire – from 27 B.C.-476 A.D. By 345 A.D., there were 175 festivals a year, 101 devoted to theatre.In 55 B.C., the first stone theatre was built in Rome (by Julius Caesar) • Roman Theatre Borrowed Greek ideas and improved (?) on them. Less philosophical than Greek theatre. It encompassed more than drama : acrobatics, gladiators, jugglers, athletics, chariots races, sea battles, boxing, animal fights. Entertainment tended to be grandiose. Actors / performers were called "histriones” • Two major influences on Roman theatre:Greek Drama/ Etruscan influences emphasized circus-like elements. Drama flourished under the republic but declined into variety entertainment under the empire. • Roman festivals: Held in honor of the gods, but much less religious than in • • • • .THREE AUTHORS OF THE TIME PLAUTUS SENECA TERRANCE • ROMAN THEATRE BEGAN TO DEVELOP STOCK CHARACTERS FOR THEIR PLAYS. THEY ALSO HAD 3 DOORS ON STAGE THAT WERE STOCK SET PROPS. EACH DOOR MEANT THAT THE ACTOR WOULD BE GOING TO A SPECIFIC PLACE OFF STAGE IF THEY USED THE DOOR AS AN EXIT. THEY CONTINUED TO PERFORM IN THE ORCHESTRA AREA UNTIL THE COLOSSEUM. Roman Theatre Design General characteristics: Built on level ground with stadiumstyle seating (audience raised) Skene becomes scaena – joined with audience to form one architectural unit Paradoi become vomitorium into orchestra and audience Orchestra becomes half-circle Stage raised to five feet Stages were large – 20-40 feet deep, 100-300 feet long, could seat 10-15,000 people 3-5 doors in rear wall and at least one in the wings scaena fronts – façade of the stage house – had columns, niches, porticoes, statues – painted stage was covered with a roof dressing rooms in side wings trap doors were common awning over the audience to protect them from the sun, during the empire around 78 B.C, .cooling system – air blowing over streams of water area in from of the scaena called the proskene (proscenium) 125 permanent theatres built during the empire. • Roman Actors Referred to as histriones and mimes. Mimes, however, were considered inferior; perhaps they were slaves. Roman audiences • The aristocratic Romans didn’t like Roman theatre. The majority of them did not attend performances. • Consequently the audiences consisted of the lower class of Italians. • This group wanted entertainment and they laughed at the intellectuals and their idea of theatre. This caused this art form to descend into spectacles and hollow comedies. Tragedies gradually degenerated and comedies turned into vulgar slapstick performances. Roman government and the stage • The Roman senate was hostile to the theatre. • First portable stages were simple portable wooden platforms. These were not permanent structures. • In 61 B.C. Pompey ( a military and political leader) built a HUGE auditorium. To make it comply with Roman rules, he had to place a small statue of Venus at the top and call it a temple of worship. • The steps served as seats for the audience. The theatre structure • Caesar also built a structure which served 2 forms of entertainment. • Roman theatre was the first to use a front curtain. It rolled up and down from a trough in the downstage floor. • The Coliseums structure was used for brutal battles where Christians were fed to lions, gladiators fought, chariot races were held. At times special areas were flooded and ships were brought in to conduct sea battles. Slaves were used as the ships crew. ELIZBETHAN THEATRE HISTORY • The next step of our journey will be the Elizabethan period. We are talking about a time some 400 years ago when Queen Elizabeth I was on the English throne; she reigned for a long period from 1558 to 1603 - 45 years in all; William Shakespeare was born in 1564 and he died in 1616, so he was essentially an Elizabethan, though he survived the Queen by 13 years. He grew up in the little country town of Stratford-on-Avon where he went • 12 • to the local Grammar School and learned the 'small Latin and less Greek' which Ben Jonson attributed to him. Round about 1585/6 he went to London and his first play (the first part of Henry VI) was produced about 1590. • 1576, the first custom-made London theatre, appropriately called 'The Theatre' was built in Finsbury Fields and the next year, 1577, The Curtain was built in the same area. Finsbury, now a bustling part of London, was then almost a country area but within easy reach of the City. These two theatres were so successful that ten years later another spate of building began, but this time across the river on Bankside, which gradually became a theatre centre. In 1587 The Rose was built, in 1595 The Swan, in 1599 The Globe and in 1600 The Fortune, all in the same vicinity. • The Globe was built by the Burbage Brothers, Richard and Cuthbert, whose father, James, had built The Theatre back in 1576. The Globe was, in fact, a sort of reconstruction of The Theatre, for in 1597/8, when the lease ran out, The Theatre was demolished and its fabric taken to Bankside and used in the building of The Globe. It was The Globe where, after 1599, Shakespeare's company, at that time called the Chamberlain's Men, performed his plays. ] • The Globe has been reconstructed on the banks of the Thames in London, opposite St Paul's Cathedral. We do not know exactly • 17 • what the original Globe looked like but we do have some early sketches of the 2nd Globe - the first was burned down in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII. It was rebuilt in 1614. The players onstage called for “cannons!” and cannons were indeed fired from above the stage, setting the thatched roof on fire. The Globe Theatre. THEATRE STRUCTURE • What then do we know about Elizabethan theatres? Well, first, they were, in general, round, square, octagonal, or something of the sort. What seems to be certain is that the buildings were not longer in one dimension than another; it is now, in fact, believed that the Globe was a 24-sided polygon. • The theatres were, in effect, open-air theatres the building, • surrounded an open yard (like the Inn-Yards) with the stage at one end, jutting out into the audience to about half the depth of the theatre; the width was considerably more. Round three sides of the yard were three tiers of galleries where the wealthier or superior members of the audience sat; the rest of the audience stood in the open yard around the stage and (for obvious reasons) they were known as 'the Groundlings'. COST TO ENTER • It cost a penny to get into the theatre and prices were accumulative, so that for a further penny you could sit in the "two penny gallery" on the top tier and for further pennies still you could go into one of the lower galleries. The Groundling paying his penny would be spending the better part of a day's wages to go into the theatre. • 21 • Ms. Dean’s web address: • www.pauladean.weebly.com