Download Theatre History - Johnson County Schools

Theatre History
A Study Guide
Greek Drama
Thespis was first actor
Created to honor
Dionysus
Dithyrambs: choral
chants and songs

Greek (cont.)
Aeschylus: The Seven
Against Thebes
Sophocles: Antigone,
Oedipus the King
Euripides: Medea

Greek (cont.)
Elaborate masks that
amplified voices
Cothurnii: tall boots that
made actors larger than
life

Greek (cont.)
Drama was a form of
worship
Used to represent
large moral concepts
and ideals

English Medieval
Originated in the Church
Was a way to present the
Bible to the non-Latin
speaking public

English Medieval
Saint plays—lives of saints
Mystery plays—Bible
stories
Morality plays—depicted
broad Moral concepts

Medieval (cont.)
Performed on platform stages
adjacent to the church or on
the town square.
 Used movable stages called
pageant wagons

Medieval (cont.)
Costuming was simple
Only surviving Morality
play--Everyman

Italian Renaissance
Opera arose from a desire to return to
the choral styles of the Greek
 Main focus was the commedia
dell’arte
 first comedic drama
 Used stock characters
 Most famous stock character:

Renaissance (cont)
Mime was popular
 Masks were painted directly
onto the face
 Italian Renaissance became the
foundation for Western Drama
to the present

Elizabethan
Theaters were round, with tiers of
seats.
 The poorest people stood on the
ground in front of the stage (called
groundlings)
 Most famous theatre: Globe
 Considered “Golden Era” of Theatre

Elizabethan (cont.)



Moliere—French playwright; wrote
farces
Christopher Marlowe—contemporary of
Shakespeare; wrote Doctor Faustus and
Tambourlaine the Great
William Shakespeare—considered
greatest playwright of all time; wrote
Hamlet, Julius Ceasar, A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet
th
19
Century
Plays enjoyed long runs
 New lighting technology allows
night performances
 Elaborate and accurate sets,
costumes, and props
 Trapdoors and hydraulic lifts
create special effects

th
19
Cent. (cont.)
Many plays were melodramas—
heavy on plot; light on character
development
 Oscar Wilde—The Importance of
Being Earnest
 Henrik Ibsen—A Doll’s House
 Gilbert and Sullivan—wrote comic
operettas; The Pirates of Penzance

th
20



Century
Many new innovations
Theatre of the Absurd: drama that
explored the human psyche in strange,
abstract ways
Musical Theatre: most popular form of
theatre in this century
 Rodgers and Hammerstein innovated
the modern musical with Oklahoma!
th
20
Cent. (cont.)
Film, a new form of drama, arose.
Film is now the most commonly
watched dramatic art.
 First film with sound—The Jazz
Singer
 Walt Disney—pioneer in
animation; Snow White and the
