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The Theatre – Introduction to Item 79
I love the theatre, although I don’t go as often as I would like. When we lived in York, we went every year to see Berwick Kaler (a Geordie) doing the panto. He had his own song about babbies and bairns (babies and children) we had to join in with.
One year, Santa came onstage and gave all the kids in the front row lollipops. I was indignant about not getting one, so I yelled that he’d missed me out. Santa was obliged to come all the way up to the back of the theatre to hand me a sweet.
I’ve seen the Snow Queen and the Nutcracker Suite with my mum, four different Shakespeare plays with the school (we studied a different one per year), Swan Lake, The Ladykillers, Abigail’s Party and Matthew Bourne’s Dorian Gray. I’ve also seen Starlight Express and Joseph (twice), but there’s a good explanation for that.
I think it’s a shame that people don’t make such a ‘thing’ of going to the theatre these days. I liked getting dressed up for the panto, having an ice-cream in the interval and peering up at the boxes. The Little Theatre in Gateshead is still a good experience, so maybe I should get along there more.
The History of The Theatre
Unsurprisingly, the theatre has an ancient history, with the Greeks the first to put on performances back in the 6th century BC. These began life as ceremonies to honour Dionysus, god of wine and fertility, and were probably more interactive than modern productions.
Female followers would carry ‘thyrosi’ – phallic symbols – dance themselves into a frenzy and then rip apart live sacrificial animals. Fortunately, not all of the Dionysus cult performances were quite so wild.
They also retold the Greek myths in choral song, and one priest, Thespis, developed this by having conversations with the chorus while on stage. And yes, his name did inspire the term ‘thespians’.
Over time, the Dionysians began to hold four-day festivals, with one performance per day of a play composed especially for the event.
Three were tragedies and the fourth a raunchy farce featuring the satyrs.
The Romans adapted many of the Greek plays, and theatrical performances first took place during the Roman Games (Ludi Romani). In 55BC, Julius Caesar built the first stone theatre, and many of the annual festivals were focused on drama.
After the Romans left Britain and their empire crumbled, there was a decline in theatre across Europe and the period between the 5th and 10th centuries was characterised by disorder. Small groups of actors travelled around and put plays on when they could, but the Church regarded these as pagan.
However, in the Middle Ages, the church did start using plays as a way to share stories from the bible. This continued up to the start of the 16th century, where liturgical plays took place all through Christian Europe.
Morality plays were popular between 1400 and 1550, although by the High Middle Ages (around the 1200s) farces became more popular, which were raunchy, funny and silly.
Acting became a profession in the Late Middle Ages, with Richard III and Henry VII having their own companies, who performed for the aristocracy. Henry VIII was especially fond of masques, and built his own House of Revels for these to be performed in.
In Italy, the commedia dell’arte arrived in the 1560s, and were improvisational in nature. The actors were given a basic scenario, and developed the story as they went along.
To make things easier, there were stock characters that were reused each time, often given different names but with the same general qualities.
For example, the ‘master’ was either an elderly merchant from Venice, his doctor friend/rival, or the captain. The ‘servant’ was always an acrobatic role, and similar to a harlequin.
Interestingly, this character had a wooden stick with a split in it – when he hit something, it made a noise. This is where the term ‘slapstick’ comes from. Finally, there were ‘the lovers’, the most varied roles.
The troupe performing these plays had around 14 members, including women, and were paid from a share of the profits – the bigger their role, the more they earned.
In Spain, the Golden Era (1590 to 1681) saw a huge increase in theatrical performances, and in France baroque theatre, often comedic or farcical in nature, was also popular in the 1600s.
At around the same time, Britain had been released from two decades of Puritanism, and the reopening of the theatres led to a new type of performance – Restoration, which included both comedy and spectacular.
The 19th century was dominated by melodrama and romanticism in the first half (more or less) and then realism and non-realism in the latter part. This extended into the 20th century, where it developed into more experimental theatre, and saw the rise of many theatrical greats.
Greek Playwrights
As the Greek contribution was so significant to the world of theatre, they should be looked at separately. Over the next 100 years, the play festivals continued to be popular, and they led to the development of the structure of the performance and the distinction between tragedies and comedies.
In Athens, three playwrights emerged to define what theatre really was. Aeschylus, the first of these, was born in Sicily in around 525 BC. Before becoming a dramatist, he served in the army, defending Athens against the Persian invasion and taking part in the Battle of Marathon.
His experiences in war influenced much of his writing, producing ‘Persians’ in response to the invasion and talking about fighting and being injured at Marathon.
Over the years, he won the best play prize several times. He also introduced the trilogy, three plays around the same topic, and he added a second actor to the stage.
His successor was Sophocles, born 497 BC, and who beat Aeschylus to the top prize in 468. He was born into a wealthy family, and worked as treasurer for the city, as well as serving in the army.
Sophocles had a career spanning 50 years, and produced more than 100 works. Of these, seven have survived and are still performed to this day. He included the mythical king of Thebes, Oedipus, in two of the seven, and perhaps more. Oedipus is infamous for killing his father and marrying his mother, lending his name to the condition ‘Oedipal complex.’
Sophocles added a third character to performances, to create tension, conflict and drama. He is also credited with the introduction of ‘skenographia’ – scenery painting and set design, from the Greek words ‘skene’ (‘stage’) and ‘grapho’ (‘to describe’.)
The third of the Athenian tragedians is Euripides, and 19 of his works survive. He was an innovator who shaped theatre into a form that is fairly close to what we have now.
He took the heroes of the ancient myths and presented them as everyday people living through remarkable times, and he also focused on characters’ motives and inner lives.
From there, comedy became more popular, which had more of a focus on satire, particularly political, and innuendo. Old Comedy is best represented by Aristophanes, who was born in 446BC.
His plays are amongst the only surviving evidence of the period, and are both raunchy and mocking of the VIPs of the time.
There is very little evidence of Middle Comedy, but we know it was characterised by the reduction of the role of the chorus, and real people were not included and ridiculed.
New Comedy was similar to comedies of manners and situation comedy, with Menander being one of the best-known. Samples of his work still survive. The period covers the rule of the Macedonians, from Alexander the Great’s death in 323BC until 260BC.
References
SeatUp: Overview of History of Theatre
Brittanica: Theatre Building
BrightHub Education: The Three Major Greek Playwrights
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